D&D 5e is not balanced around a 6-8 encounter, 2 SR day.

[Asisreo1]

While I am conscious of the contention that the title, and therefore the topic of this thread, creates. I cannot, without an earnest effort, watch as DM's and Players tear themselves apart in an attempt to attain a rare relic of a bygone era.

This relic is a system balanced around and designed for a static number of encounters within an adventuring day while also having a specific amount of resources allotted throughout this adventuring day. I wish to encourage further thought within this community about this irregularity between the reality of the designers intents and how those within Forums treat the balance of a game system.

Before you leave wanton replies as I am certain many have the urge to do, I request for you to instead place your thoughts into retrospection. Ask yourself, Why do you believe the game was balanced with only the thought of 6-8 encounters and 2 short rests? Then, ask yourself if this reasoning must be the only way that the designers could possibly design their system.


Your first thought about where you heard this may come from the DMG. The text in question would be this:


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.

This text does not tell you anything about the balance of the game. It is merely offering advice to the DM about a potential TPK. Not about how the adventuring day was meant to be constructed.

Jeremy Crawford himself has confirmed this:


We do not design the game thinking the correct adventuring day is 6-8 encounters, because many adventuring days might have only 1, some will have 3, some will have 4, that's fine. Those are all legitimate ways to construct a D&D adventure. Source Link (https://youtu.be/XWoAK9ZaP4E?t=2445)

This means that balance in the game is not derived from a certain number of encounters during an adventuring day. The designers acknowledge that such a definitive stance would not go well in all adventures.




So, in what must a DM lean to for balance? How many encounters will provide a worthy challenge for a party? A DM can lean onto the adventuring day table. This table allows a DM to construct even a solo monster, single encounter day to be quite a challenge for a party.

Imagine, for instance, a party of 5th-level characters. We know that we need 14000 exp within the adventuring day to make them tired enough for needing a long rest. Since its only one encounter and one monster, you'll need a monster with a CR of 15 to reach 13000 exp. That would be a 5th-level party fighting a Purple Worm equivalent.

This appears hopeless, but this fight is under the assumption that the party has all their spell slots, all their HP, and have an immense advantage of action economy. Meanwhile, a party must be extremely careful. It's no longer about having enough damage to ORKO or having enough defense to chip them down. The party would need to strategize in an extremely efficient manner. A paladin no longer steals the spotlight as NOVA doesn't work, not enough to prevent a TPK. A warlock no longer needs to be shy about their spell slots, they can use them all on this encounter while having powerful and diverse other features both at-will and on-command.

If this overwhelms your group, a DM can easily introduce a CR 11 creature or a CR 12 creature. This balance is left to the DM's care. However, a DM should not feel as though they are doing a disservice to balance if they don't abide by some 6-8 encounter gospel that.

Again, I ask that you reflect upon yourself. Has balancing encounters truly been easier to you as a DM while abiding by this strict regiment of encounter building. Not only does it limit DM's creatively, it forces an adventuring day into a form of uniformity which cannot do anything but drain the group of their excitement and zeal for adventure knowing that every encounter leads to at least another 5 in a day with no true agency unless they spawn the ire of a tired DM that feels the need to account for every choice a party may have that would have them stray from their perfectly configured dungeon of medium encounters.

[MadBear]

I'd feel so bad for the 5th level party that tries to fight a purple worm. That's one battle that's definitely going to end in multiple dead adventurers.

[Asisreo1]

I'd feel so bad for the 5th level party that tries to fight a purple worm. That's one battle that's definitely going to end in multiple dead adventurers.
For sure, though I can only recommend it for those that swear up and down that their party yearns for exciting and dangerous encounters.

Once you realize most parties only want enough of a challenge to be satisfied but not enough to be in any danger outside of their control, you'll find a balance point. Which is precisely why putting balance in the DM's hands are efficient and effective.

[Unoriginal]

You're kind of conflating two different uses of the term "balance".

Like the DMG says, the expectation is that a party will be able to handle 6-8 Medium encounters with 2 short rests before running out of ressources and being in a very dire spot, regardless of party composition.

In other words, it can be said that "all classes are balanced to be able to handle 6-8 Medium encounters with 2 short rests before running out of ressources". Why use the term "balance" here? Because the different classes do *not* handle their ressources the same. An all-Rogue party would be able to "handle 6-8 Medium encounters with 2 short rests before running out of ressources" with the caveat that the only ressource those PCs can run out off is HPs and HDs (baring feats and the like). Meanwhile an all-Warlock party would be able to "handle 6-8 Medium encounters with 2 short rests before running out of ressources" but would have most of the PCs' ressources depend on those 2 short rests.

If all classes can accomplish the same thing, but in different ways, it is balanced.


Now, what this *does not mean* is that all adventuring days must/should be calibrated on a set number of encounter of a set difficulty with a set number of short rest. A D&D party can handle a large and varied amount of threats of different composition, with how difficult each threat is depending on party composition and of how they handled the previous ones, and if some of the PCs have to grind their teeth and run low on ressources for a while it's not a problem.

In other words, it's not "an adventure day is balanced if it has the equivalent of 6-8 Medium encounter with 2 short rests".

To use an analogy: take a large lineup of different cars. Saying "all those cars can do 250km of distance with only two stops at the station service" is not the same thing as saying "all those cars will give the same performance in every way and it's only fair if you do drive 250km". Taking the jungle jeep to go to the grocery shop in a crowded city won't be as efficient as using it to drive in the jungle, and taking the 7-places family car to drive in the jungle alone will wield poor, if interesting to watch results.

That's it. It is less that the thread title or the topic creates contention, it's just that "balance" is a large term which can be used in a lot of different ways.

[Chugger]

You asked for "wanton" replies, so here comes one.

I never paid attention to the 6 to 8 encounter 2 SR thing. Haven't you ever watched "Pirates of the Caribbean"? Yes, the Code really is more of a "guideline", and the rules for DnD have always been that, too - at some tables less so - at other tables more so. So I really don't get the desperate, "feels like the world is ending" tone you invoke - at least that's how I read it. I mean, come on - snap out of it - it feels to me like you've let yourself get entangled in a super-funk - your plane has stalled perhaps - just pull out of the stall before you nose into the ground!

I sometimes play Adventurer's League, and it's great - because unless you're doing a hardcover you never know who will be at your table - maybe 2 brand new people to DnD - maybe an old grognard - and we do modules (but DMs can modify them) - it lasts 3-4 hours and it's done. We typically get 3 fights in that time and several role play encounters or social encounters - and maybe a puzzle or a hard trap. It's hard to do four or more full fights in that time frame, especially because not all players are quick or disciplined and can do their turns fast - some players are very slow - but it's still fun - and if they're open to being helped or receiving suggestions, you can nicely do that (but don't overwhelm them, if they're new) - we play DnD - and this panic thing you talk about in your post … it's not there.

Sometimes I play a home game. We set our own hours, and I don't artificially impose "no, no short rest for YOU" on them - I only do that if there's a darn good reason for it. I'm usually DMing these, but we have fun - and maybe they have 1 encounter in a gaming day, then a long rest, and four encounters the next day, and no encounters the next day, and two encounters the next day - it doesn't matter - they don't know how many encounters they're going to have after the fight they're on, so they have to try to win it not blowing all their resources. And I don't have to throw a Purple Worm at lvl 5s to create a challenge. As long as they feel some fear, as long as the enemy threatens them and they have to look at what they can do and think "what is the best thing I can do here...?" and then "Oh, I know! That!" And it either works or it doesn't - if it doesn't I remind them it was just because they did a really bad dice roll - and they can try it again, and they do and next time it works, and they feel happy they picked this thing.

Look, you obviously feel DnD's "sky" is "falling" or something. I don't. I'm having a lot of fun. The people I play with are mostly having fun. Some burn out, some don't. We're all different.

You're free to feel panicked or bad about this topic you've brought up - maybe I don't understand your context - maybe the DMs you play with don't understand how to adjust on the fly and make encounters work for the conditions their group gives them. I try to adjust what I throw at the party to the abilities of the players. We all have different contexts in life - I obviously do not understand where you are coming from - I'm guessing you won't understand me. But the simple answer to what you're talking about is to take a deep breath, calm down, and let your intuitive mind speak to you - have faith that there are solutions - and let them come to you.

And break your concerns into bite sized pieces. We can't help you if you throw a tidal wave of concern at us. If you break it down into smaller problems, a few at a time or one at a time, we can. I don't mean to be insulting you. I do want to help. But we do need to get past this "wanton" comments thing - yeah, I'm not a fan of that statement. I'm not "upset" about it. If we were talking face to face you could tell I'm not upset - I'm trying to understand what would drive you to say something like that. That's all.

[Zhorn]

Worth noting that context matters a lot in this discussion.

6-8 encounters in an adventuring day doesn't mean it must be 6-8 COMBAT encounters.
Environmental hazards and impediments are encounters
Traps are encounters
Social interactions can be encounters
Exploration, navigation
Investigations and tracking
puzzles even

Pretty much anything that can be boiled down to having a goal and a fail state will be an encounter. If they players have agency and it can consume resources then it's an encounter. Combat with a monster is just one of many options. Assigning XP budgets to non-combat encounters can get rather fiddly, so I can understand why folks tend to ignore them as encounters when working out an adventuring day.

Also the timestamp of OP's link is partway into the conversation that is cutting out the context of the discussion.
For those wanting to listed in, jump back to here (https://youtu.be/XWoAK9ZaP4E?t=2375) for the start of that question.
The topic is about the legitimacy of people's games if they don't do 6-8 encounters in an adventuring day.
6-8 medium encounters is just the recommended point for if you want to run the character's dry on their resources for the day, not that you NEED 6-8 to classify as a legitimate adventuring day.

Next is XP budgets and calculations.
You've taken the Adventuring Day XP (DMG p84) to get the 5th level value of 3,500, multiplied by 4 to get your 14,000, but are ignoring the calculations from the previous section on recommended encounter thresholds and encounter multipliers (DMG p82)
A single deadly encounter for a party of four 5th level adventurers will have a budget of 4,400 XP (1,100 XP per character)
You can exceed that with single Abominable Yeti (CR9) for 5,000 XP (1,250 XP per character)
or
6 Bugbears (CR1) and 1 Bugbear Chief (CR3) awarding 1,900 XP (475 XP per character), but for a budgeted value of 4,750 XP (1,188 XP per character)

Neither encounter is anywhere near Purple Worm territory, which as a solo CR15 monster is almost three times the XP budget for a deadly encounter for four 5th level adventurers.


also @Unoriginal, I like your post.

[Dork_Forge]

The post seems a bit redundant in light of the quotes used, it clearly states that if the difficulty is higher then the number of encounters will decrease and if the difficulty is lower it will increase. Some things that should be considered for DMs in relation to this topic:

-Not every adventuring day needs to take the party down to the wire
-Not all encounters are combat, I bait players into resource expenditure with roleplay all the time on purpose and they choose to spend them independently other times
-The CR system is very bad and should be more used as a rule of thumb or a way to inspire yourself to somewhat level relevant monsters if you don't know what to use.
-Touching on the above two points, traps, puzzles and environmental effects are non-straightforward but can have a meaningful impact on player resources and strategy

My current campaign is 3 level 12 PCs with a few bespoke boons and a mix of DMG and homebrew items, the party leans far more into roleplay and so attempting 6-8 combats would be a demoralising slog of a session for them. I achieved this (kind of) once just to see what would happen by giving them an arena competition to earn needed cash (and magical loot) in a 2/SR/2/SR/boss fight structure.

Every party is different, from prefernces to composition and you should balance for the party you play with, this isn't something the DMG can hand you neatly nor is it something you can just be taught. Real balance comes with experience and it's okay to get it wrong on your way t othat point and even afterwards, the important part isn't how relatively challenging an adventuring day is, it's how fun it was.

Somewhat ninja'd by Zhorn, good show ol' chap.

[Frogreaver]

Game actually is more resilient to lower encounter adventuring days than most believe. Even the 1 encounter day scenario isn't so far off as many believe.

There's alot of mitigating factors:

Most efficient spells are concentration and so you only get 1 up in any given fight.
Most efficient non concentration spells tend to be AOE damage spells and they aren't easy to efficiently use after the first round or so of most encounters.
Short rest abilities can now all be used in one encounter
With 1 encounter more time is spent out of combat - giving a boost classes like rogues
In combat healing becomes more important as players are more likely to drop in 1 hard fight.
Defense becomes more important for the same reason - meaning high AC front liners have a purpose here.

It still isn't totally mitigated but these things help alot.

[Edea]

It's a bit frustrating that not all classes are on the same page for 'short rest recharging'.

Certain classes really suffer for it (sorcerers in particular), but then on the flipside if you try to condense the adventuring day into a couple of encounters before a long rest and just don't bother with short rest mechanics, those aforementioned classes can just nova the daylights out of said encounters, while the ones with better recovery methods and lower max output just sit there and twiddle their thumbs.

[Zhorn]

Somewhat ninja'd by Zhorn, good show ol' chap.
If it's any consolation, you beat me to the punch in many other threads :smallbiggrin:

And you do bring up a point worth considering, trying to do ONLY combat encounters in the 6-8 range can turn into a slog if you're only doing them as 'here's some monsters in a white room. next here's some monsters in a white room. next ..."
It would have been nice if the DMG made it more clear that encounters are not strictly combats. If you read the whole thing it becomes a lot more obvious, but with so much of the mechanics being combat orientated it can be easy to miss.

In a standard game session, I will usually run up to 3 combat encounters, but for an adventuring day I'll try to have a lot of different encounters packed up based on what the players are up to at the time.
Dungeon crawl? Traps, puzzles, obstacles.
Overland travel? Foraging/hunting, navigation, environmental hazards
Urban? Roleplay barter/negotiations, chase scene, skill challenges
Some sessions might end up with zero combats, but the party has been fully tapped for resources by the end.

Then sometimes there's just rest days.
Uneventful research and resupply in town
Clear skies and peaceful roads,
Empty crypt/tombs/cave cleared out by another adventuring group
Gives the characters some time for doing their own thing without adventuring getting in the way. The wizard gets to scribe in a bunch of their spells, the artificer coordinates their infusions with the party, the bard gets to perform in the tavern, the ranger spends some time training their new beast companion.
Actual encounter numbers are near 0-1, with everyone pretty topped off with all their spell slots and features.

Adventuring days don't need to be EVERY day occurrences. Some games I've been in have had the adventuring day only be the dungeons, and outside of that there were weeks of roleplay narrative focused session.
But as others have covered (such as Edea just above), when having an adventuring day, going nova in single combats, having short rest recharges, and having long rest recharges, different classes are suited to different aspects of the adventuring day, and having few encounters will yield a lopsided performance. More encounters in a day (and importantly more varied encounter types) will result in a more balanced distribution of displaying different classes strengths and capabilities.

[Unoriginal]

You asked for "wanton" replies, so here comes one.

I never paid attention to the 6 to 8 encounter 2 SR thing. Haven't you ever watched "Pirates of the Caribbean"? Yes, the Code really is more of a "guideline", and the rules for DnD have always been that, too - at some tables less so - at other tables more so. So I really don't get the desperate, "feels like the world is ending" tone you invoke - at least that's how I read it. I mean, come on - snap out of it - it feels to me like you've let yourself get entangled in a super-funk - your plane has stalled perhaps - just pull out of the stall before you nose into the ground!

The 6-8 encounter thing isn't even a rule, it's the devs saying "by the way, adventurers tend to be running on fumes after X point of the day."

[MinotaurWarrior]

Classes are balanced against each other in terms of a certain ratio of long rests : short rests : at will ability uses, with the clearest example being the warlock / bard spellcasting balance.

Disturbing this balance makes different classes shine. The bard will do much better than the warlock in a day where there is just one encounter with one long rest. The warlock will do much better than the bard in a day with eight short rests and no long rest.

But the game as a whole isn't balanced to start with. Rogues are the class that most benefits from many encounters, as they are a pure at will class (barring certain archetypes and high level features). But the purple worm has PP9, and level 5 rogues literally cannot roll below an 11 on a Stealth check, so an all level 5 rogue party cannot lose against a purple worm if they just have some means of obscuration to enable hiding.

[cutlery]

The game may or may not have been balanced around 6-8 encounters and 2 short rests per day.

It sure as hell wasn't balanced around a 5 minute adventuring day and one deadly encounter per long rest.

[Asisreo1]

You asked for "wanton" replies, so here comes one.

I never paid attention to the 6 to 8 encounter 2 SR thing. Haven't you ever watched "Pirates of the Caribbean"? Yes, the Code really is more of a "guideline", and the rules for DnD have always been that, too - at some tables less so - at other tables more so. So I really don't get the desperate, "feels like the world is ending" tone you invoke - at least that's how I read it. I mean, come on - snap out of it - it feels to me like you've let yourself get entangled in a super-funk - your plane has stalled perhaps - just pull out of the stall before you nose into the ground!

I sometimes play Adventurer's League, and it's great - because unless you're doing a hardcover you never know who will be at your table - maybe 2 brand new people to DnD - maybe an old grognard - and we do modules (but DMs can modify them) - it lasts 3-4 hours and it's done. We typically get 3 fights in that time and several role play encounters or social encounters - and maybe a puzzle or a hard trap. It's hard to do four or more full fights in that time frame, especially because not all players are quick or disciplined and can do their turns fast - some players are very slow - but it's still fun - and if they're open to being helped or receiving suggestions, you can nicely do that (but don't overwhelm them, if they're new) - we play DnD - and this panic thing you talk about in your post … it's not there.

Sometimes I play a home game. We set our own hours, and I don't artificially impose "no, no short rest for YOU" on them - I only do that if there's a darn good reason for it. I'm usually DMing these, but we have fun - and maybe they have 1 encounter in a gaming day, then a long rest, and four encounters the next day, and no encounters the next day, and two encounters the next day - it doesn't matter - they don't know how many encounters they're going to have after the fight they're on, so they have to try to win it not blowing all their resources. And I don't have to throw a Purple Worm at lvl 5s to create a challenge. As long as they feel some fear, as long as the enemy threatens them and they have to look at what they can do and think "what is the best thing I can do here...?" and then "Oh, I know! That!" And it either works or it doesn't - if it doesn't I remind them it was just because they did a really bad dice roll - and they can try it again, and they do and next time it works, and they feel happy they picked this thing.

Look, you obviously feel DnD's "sky" is "falling" or something. I don't. I'm having a lot of fun. The people I play with are mostly having fun. Some burn out, some don't. We're all different.

You're free to feel panicked or bad about this topic you've brought up - maybe I don't understand your context - maybe the DMs you play with don't understand how to adjust on the fly and make encounters work for the conditions their group gives them. I try to adjust what I throw at the party to the abilities of the players. We all have different contexts in life - I obviously do not understand where you are coming from - I'm guessing you won't understand me. But the simple answer to what you're talking about is to take a deep breath, calm down, and let your intuitive mind speak to you - have faith that there are solutions - and let them come to you.

And break your concerns into bite sized pieces. We can't help you if you throw a tidal wave of concern at us. If you break it down into smaller problems, a few at a time or one at a time, we can. I don't mean to be insulting you. I do want to help. But we do need to get past this "wanton" comments thing - yeah, I'm not a fan of that statement. I'm not "upset" about it. If we were talking face to face you could tell I'm not upset - I'm trying to understand what would drive you to say something like that. That's all.
I'm not of the mind that D&D is in a crises, for what it's worth. I'm more concerned with dispelling a myth than to defend myself. I use Wanton, though it's a reckless use of the word.

Truly, I have been met with malice over my controversial opinions but most in this community at least takes the time to think about the topic before providing condescending answers and curses. That said, I still want people to actually engage in the argument rather than needlessly tear it down.

[SiCK_Boy]

The CR system, along with the daily XP budget for encounters and the concept of an "adventure day", are all concepts that were designed as a means to guide the DM in fine-tuning his encounters while trying to avoid TPK and player death.

The choice of word may have been problematic. Nobody really expects every day in the life of an adventurer to be made up of full "adventuring days"; this issue is further compounded by the fact that we tend to associate a "day" with 1 long rest (which normally marks the passing of time from one day to another). Maybe the system would have been better understood if it was called "adventure time between long rest" instead.

As for being "balanced", again, it's a very subjective choice of word by the OP. Normally, people who use the word "balance" in relation to the adventure day, especially on these forums, do so in response to DM asking (or complaining) about encounters being too easy or too difficult, or groups of players destroying every encounter. It's usually in light of these complaints (which often have the same root causes, such as a DM allowing the players to continually live through 5-minutes adventuring days) that others will respond with an explanation of how the system is built (and designed), and how it's normal for players to not be fully challenged if they never have more than 1 or 2 encounters per day (even worse so when they know for a fact they will not have any other encounter).

I also think the way a lot of "public games" are played these days (on twitch and various other streams), with an emphasis on larger groups (6-7 players) and fewer combats (because they take a lot of time, so it turns out into every fight being a boss fight), while still having the story progressing quickly in terms of passage of time, further add to the confusion some DMs feel.

Add to that the fact that multiple tables use houserules that produce stronger player characters (everyone gets a free Feat at Lvl 1, using potions as a free action, etc.), as well as the fact that many DM just play the opposition as dumb AI (like using a dice roll to randomly determine which player a monster will attack; did anyone ever see a player choosing his target this way!?!), and you also have a lot of DM who undermine the system while complaining about it.

The game does provide a system to help us assess challenge difficulty and deadliness of encounters. It's not perfect, some aspects of it are more finicky than others, and it is oriented strongly toward combat, but it exist, and it is based on other assumptions and design that are core to the way the game was created (such as the various class powers per level, the usual composition of a party, etc.). And I think one of the goals of such a system is precisely to help DMs avoid situations where they throw a Purple Worm at a group of Level 5 players.

[Willie the Duck]

I'm not of the mind that D&D is in a crises, for what it's worth. I'm more concerned with dispelling a myth than to defend myself. I use Wanton, though it's a reckless use of the word.

Truly, I have been met with malice over my controversial opinions but most in this community at least takes the time to think about the topic before providing condescending answers and curses. That said, I still want people to actually engage in the argument rather than needlessly tear it down.

The tone of your initial post comes off highly as 'someone trying to declare themselves as the adult in the conversation, without doing the work of showing evidence thereof.' If this is your normal form of communication, it might not be your opinions that are the source of the malice.

I think others have answered much of the initial points very well. Here is a sub-point I noticed:


as DM's and Players tear themselves apart in an attempt to attain a rare relic of a bygone era.

This relic is a system balanced around and designed for a static number of encounters within an adventuring day while also having a specific amount of resources allotted throughout this adventuring day.

What specifically do you mean by relic of a bygone era? Do you mean that playstyles have changed? They certainly have, overall, but I'm not sure that they have specifically in this regard. In my experience, games of D&D have always vacillated between significantly more encounters per day than 6-8 moderately challenging encounters (the archetypal dungeon-crawl) and significantly fewer (wilderness travel or hexcrawling, most in-town situations). That bimodal distribution has always been a challenge for the designers, as (assuming inter-class balance is a goal) it makes balancing always-available abilities and expended-resource abilities difficult. Regardless, I don't think that has specifically changed.

[Asisreo1]

And I think one of the goals of such a system is precisely to help DMs avoid situations where they throw a Purple Worm at a group of Level 5 players.
I agree with much of what you said. I do want to add, the Purple Worm encounter should absolutely be treated with careful thought and consideration. Using the tables, even eyeballing it, a DM will know for certain that an encounter like this brings a more than unlikely chance of TPK. This encounter would be a campaign-ending single-encounter fight and it would be the type of fight that would make the players take the final boss extremely seriously.

Again, I do not recommend running this type of EXP expenditure all at once unless you're absolutely certain that your party is comfortable in their abilities and tactics and even then understand that the dice may be unusually cruel.

But it's a perfect fight for those DM's who complain D&D is too easy, because this fight is everything but. Spellcasters, in this particular fight, are extremely useful. They can target the worm's god-awful saves to help prevent them from getting a turn, which is essential. While this gives spellcasters a good use, it's ultimately a delay unless the worm takes damage, which is where the martials come in. The martials also come in if the worm ever gets a turn to act as they sometimes have enough AC and HP to withstand around 1 turn of damage which buys time for the spellcasters.

[cutlery]

Spellcasters, in this particular fight, are extremely useful. They can target the worm's god-awful saves to help prevent them from getting a turn, which is essential.

Because they took Purple Worm Slaying as an elective in wizard school?

A 5th level party would need to rely on both great tactics and teamwork and meta-knowledge about the creature to survive that encounter. Without that knowledge, they might try ranged attacks and reflex-save evocations to chip away at its hp; making that caster a tasty morsel for swallowing.

The encounter guidelines are in place, in part, to prevent that sort of thing. If you know your players can handle it, you don't need the guidelines.

[Asisreo1]

The tone of your initial post comes off highly as 'someone trying to declare themselves as the adult in the conversation, without doing the work of showing evidence thereof.' If this is your normal form of communication, it might not be your opinions that are the source of the malice.

The main topic of this thread has been provided evidence, as the link to Jeremy Crawford's interview should give a credible account to how the designers intend to design the game.

My claim, however, is not that D&D was designed around some other encounter distribution, though. My claim was merely that it was not balanced around the specific 6-8 encounters. I do believe that it was balanced to include a day of 6-8 encounters but that was not my original claim and therefore needs no evidence thus far.



I think others have answered much of the initial points very well. Here is a sub-point I noticed:



What specifically do you mean by relic of a bygone era? Do you mean that playstyles have changed? They certainly have, overall, but I'm not sure that they have specifically in this regard. In my experience, games of D&D have always vacillated between significantly more encounters per day than 6-8 moderately challenging encounters (the archetypal dungeon-crawl) and significantly fewer (wilderness travel or hexcrawling, most in-town situations). That bimodal distribution has always been a challenge for the designers, as (assuming inter-class balance is a goal) it makes balancing always-available abilities and expended-resource abilities difficult. Regardless, I don't think that has specifically changed.
Excellent question.

The bygone era is a time when the designers actually did balance the game over a certain expectation between encounters and their distribution. As you say, there has always been an expected dungeon-crawl into wilderness areas with a predictable number of encounters within. Now, though, the designers have moved away from DM-controlled resource management.

Things like encounter-based resources like in 4e no longer exist because it set an expectation on when and how a player should use their resource. Unmarrying resources from the designer's expectations allow both the DM and Player themselves to facilitate resource management in a pace they are comfortable with.

[cutlery]

Now, though, the designers have moved away from DM-controlled resource management.



DMs still hold near-complete control over resource management; more than in 4e, as the short rest resources require the DM to acquiesce to a much longer rest period.

That some DMs are happy to do this doesn't change the fact the power to deny a short rest is in their hands.

[KorvinStarmast]

While I am conscious of the contention that the title, and therefore the topic of this thread, creates I cannot, without an earnest effort, watch as DM's and Players tear themselves apart in an attempt to attain a rare relic of a bygone era. We don't, because we don't play D&D for pay. :smallwink:

I have never tried to put 8 encounters into an adventure day. Never, ever. Sometimes we have reached six, and the only time we had seven was by accident; but that was the old serial encounters that all pointed to the big battle in the big room in Sunless Citadel ... it was nearly by accident that they just kep moving like that. In another hardcover adventure, had my party been 'on task' I think they'd have had 8 encounters in the Salt Marsh haunted house, but I'll just say that events conspired to make that not true (and they accidentally frustrated Ned's designs without realizing that they had done so ....)

Here's a core problem with the syndrome that you are dealing with: there is no way to standardize party composition.

The typical party is four, plus or minus one, and there are 12 PC classes, each with two to eight sub classes, each with some differences in what they contribute to an encounter.

Now, you could just play the four PCs in the Basic Rules: Life Cleric, Champion Fighter, Evoker Wizard, and Thief Rogue, and see how six encounters with two Short Rests go for you. Medium Encounters. Do it for tier 1, tier 2, tier 3, using just those four PCs. One of the things that we see is that spell selection and preparation throws in a variable that is kind of tough to control for.

Have you done this? Until you try this, I think it's quite hard to evaluate the overall concept in the DMG. I've had the chance to play quite a few one-shots and this I have discovered, regardless of tier. Party composition matters, and party size matters. But more than that, player skill influences results.

Example: we tend to have four or five of the seven in our big group show up on a given session. I can predict as a DM which set will have an easier time than another set, based on how they do, or do not, think tactically. When I am not DMing (same group) I as a player assess who shows up and how we all fit together to inform what I do, because I never stop thinking tactically. That's me. The other players phase in and out of that: sometimes, they are all in on tactical thinking and communication. Other times, we're just here for the beer. I assess the group's mood, which is OOC, and adjust with a single goal: team success and no bodies left behind.

In some other groups, the personality mix and style mix will be completely different.

But here's the other deal. I have found in play that the difference in action economy between four PCs and five PCs is significant during the first three rounds of a battle. I had not expected that, but it's one of the few takeaways for me from this edition. With 3 PCs in the party, the swinginess amplifies.

Jeremy Crawford himself has confirmed this:

Source Link (https://youtu.be/XWoAK9ZaP4E?t=2445) I play around with the "daily xp budget" and mix up the encounters when I am making my own. 3-5 for an adventure day's my target.

[JackPhoenix]

But the game as a whole isn't balanced to start with. Rogues are the class that most benefits from many encounters, as they are a pure at will class (barring certain archetypes and high level features). But the purple worm has PP9, and level 5 rogues literally cannot roll below an 11 on a Stealth check, so an all level 5 rogue party cannot lose against a purple worm if they just have some means of obscuration to enable hiding.

Rogues literally can get Stealth under 11 at level 5. Maxing your Dex and putting your expertise into Stealth is not the only way to play a rogue. Not that it matters, as purple worm has blindsight and tremorsense, making obscurement irrelevant and Stealth impossible unless all your rogues can fly.

[KorvinStarmast]

making obscurement irrelevant and Stealth impossible unless all your rogues can fly. Five aaracokra rogues fly into a bar ... :smallcool:

[sophontteks]

I was under the impression that an encounter doesn't nessesarily mean a "combat encounter."

When you expand this into all encounters, including social ones, puzzles, etc. It becomes a lot more reasonable and I think many people follow close to it without realizing.

[MadBear]

You're kind of conflating two different uses of the term "balance".

Like the DMG says, the expectation is that a party will be able to handle 6-8 Medium encounters with 2 short rests before running out of ressources and being in a very dire spot, regardless of party composition.

In other words, it can be said that "all classes are balanced to be able to handle 6-8 Medium encounters with 2 short rests before running out of ressources". Why use the term "balance" here? Because the different classes do *not* handle their ressources the same. An all-Rogue party would be able to "handle 6-8 Medium encounters with 2 short rests before running out of ressources" with the caveat that the only ressource those PCs can run out off is HPs and HDs (baring feats and the like). Meanwhile an all-Warlock party would be able to "handle 6-8 Medium encounters with 2 short rests before running out of ressources" but would have most of the PCs' ressources depend on those 2 short rests.

If all classes can accomplish the same thing, but in different ways, it is balanced.


Now, what this *does not mean* is that all adventuring days must/should be calibrated on a set number of encounter of a set difficulty with a set number of short rest. A D&D party can handle a large and varied amount of threats of different composition, with how difficult each threat is depending on party composition and of how they handled the previous ones, and if some of the PCs have to grind their teeth and run low on ressources for a while it's not a problem.

In other words, it's not "an adventure day is balanced if it has the equivalent of 6-8 Medium encounter with 2 short rests".

To use an analogy: take a large lineup of different cars. Saying "all those cars can do 250km of distance with only two stops at the station service" is not the same thing as saying "all those cars will give the same performance in every way and it's only fair if you do drive 250km". Taking the jungle jeep to go to the grocery shop in a crowded city won't be as efficient as using it to drive in the jungle, and taking the 7-places family car to drive in the jungle alone will wield poor, if interesting to watch results.

That's it. It is less that the thread title or the topic creates contention, it's just that "balance" is a large term which can be used in a lot of different ways.

This pretty much says everything I have to say on the matter.

[KorvinStarmast]

I was under the impression that an encounter doesn't nessesarily mean a "combat encounter." I agree. A trap can be an encounter. A conversation with a couple of giants can be an encounter without combat. We once bribed two hill giants with a keg of beer to let us pass by the narrow gorge that they were guarding.
The cost in resources was a keg of beer (from our wagon) and one tongues spell from our cleric.

[cutlery]

I was under the impression that an encounter doesn't nessesarily mean a "combat encounter."

When you expand this into all encounters, including social ones, puzzles, etc. It becomes a lot more reasonable and I think many people follow close to it without realizing.

The 6-8 encounters guideline is in the chapter on adventures; specifically the section on combat encounters and awarding experience for combat.

The briefest of discussions about experience for noncombat encounters is on DMG p. 261; where it stats "As a starting point, use the rules for building combat encounters in chapter 3".

The entire discussion around number of encounters per day in chapter 3 is centered around combat - social or investigative encounters may use no resources at all (and some classes that can be designed to excel at these sorts of encounters can be designed to do so without the use of any resources at all).

There could be infinite social encounters or trips to the library in the adventuring day. There cannot be infinite combat encounters, as players will eventually get hit and die via chip damage.

[jaappleton]

So... You're right. It's not balanced around that.

I want to be clear, an encounter doesn't have to mean combat. Its anything that's designed to expend resources. Could be the Sorc twins the Fly spell on some allies so they can all get up the steep cliff.

Initially, 5E's combat design assumed always that the party had all their resources. This was said by Crawford a few different times. And that's proven to be a mistake.

Case in point: Tyranny of Dragons. If you've read the first few chapters, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Its a philosophy they've backtracked on a bit in the last 18 months or so, even re-releasing and altering the beginning of that adventure.

[Unoriginal]

Five aaracokra rogues fly into a bar ... :smallcool:

They take 1d6 bludgeoning damage and need to pass a DC 10 DEX save to not fall prone.




Its a philosophy they've backtracked on a bit in the last 18 months or so, even re-releasing and altering the beginning of that adventure.

I never figured what they altered in that adventure's beginning. Would you mind telling me?

[MaxWilson]

I'd feel so bad for the 5th level party that tries to fight a purple worm. That's one battle that's definitely going to end in multiple dead adventurers.

Huh. I think it sounds awesome, a game session worth remembering. I would totally sign up to play Tremors in 5E. I'd rather do that than one of WotC's canned Save The World quests that expect me to spend months playing before getting to the climax. Fifth level Tremors vs. a Purple Worm is a tough adventure, probably will result in dead PCs, but might be winnable and most importantly is respectful of my time: can be won or lost in maybe three to eight hours depending, not months. Then if I liked it I can play again or play a different game with the same or different PCs.

Remember: Tremors didn't happen in eighteen seconds. There's foreshadowing, NPCs, terrain manipulation, a fake victory with the first kill then the reveal of additional antagonists, multiple chances to rest and regroup, logistical concerns, an escape plan which almost works, etc.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I've been told that the whole "adventuring day budget" table (and thus the 6-8 MEDIUM encounters text, which is just a mathematical extrapolation from that table, albeit a bad one[1]) thing came from playtest parties saying "this is as far as we felt safe going at these levels". And then added in some padding on the side of safety.

If that's true, then the design argument is backward--the entire "adventuring day budget" is a result, not a design parameter. And it's a safety threshold, for the default[2] parties. That entire section of the DMG is explicitly, Word of God designed for new DMs and is not rule as much as guideline for not TPK-ing your party.

IF (no encounters above Deadly && total adjusted xp within budget && up to 2 short rests as needed) THEN (tpk risk is minimal).

My preference is to go with 3-4 combat encounters, putting the median at Hard. Because I'm not using default parties, that really undershoots the actual budget--I'm not pushing my parties very hard at all. But that's play-style--I don't go for challenge as a source of fun. Others might, so they can reconfigure.

But yes, the game does not assume any particular number of encounters, although it does work better if N (average) > 1. Variety is good--if you want a one-fight day, also do some long days (with easier encounters but more of them). And 1 adventuring day =/= 1 in-universe day or 1 session. Not every in-universe day is an adventuring day, and sessions might only have a piece of an adventuring day.

[1] if you actually run the numbers for each level, it's more like 6-7 Medium or 4-5 Hard, with significant variation.
[2] Low optimization, no magic items or variants (including multiclassing or feats). +2 or +3 primary stat, positive secondary and Constitution at level 1.

[jaappleton]

They take 1d6 bludgeoning damage and need to pass a DC 10 DEX save to not fall prone.




I never figured what they altered in that adventure's beginning. Would you mind telling me?

I can't quote it verbatim, as honestly I didn't own Tyranny until AFTER the change. I'd heard of its difficulty early on, often causing multiple TPKs without DM intervention, and its penchant for 4-5 encounters in a row without any sort of rest being available.

As such, I can't confirm the validity of what this states, but its seems pretty on the nose. Instead of redesigning the whole thing, they gave more healing potions, chopped down the number of enemies per encounter, and the party reaches second level much sooner.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/di8ukk/tyranny_of_dragons_chapter_1_changes/

[Man_Over_Game]

Before you leave wanton replies as I am certain many have the urge to do, I request for you to instead place your thoughts into retrospection. Ask yourself, Why do you believe the game was balanced with only the thought of 6-8 encounters and 2 short rests?

Well, I don't.

I think the balance is dumb no matter what the developers said.

Just off the top of my head, we can confirm that:

The Warlock is a class highly dependent on Short Rests.
The Rogue is a class that is not at all dependent on Short Rests.
The number of Short Rests at any given table is random.

So saying that there's a magical number of rests that are needed to ensure that everyone feels relevant is kinda stupid. It's flawed from the start.


Even within the Fighter, there are major issues:

Let's say we're taking a fairly average scenario of 3 encounters per day, 1 Short Rest between each encounter, each encounter lasts 3 rounds, and they're all using SS or GWM. The average damage gain through your Fighter subclasses of that day, from the simpler Fighter subclasses, are:
Champion (+4.2), Samurai (+35), Arcane Archer (+69), Battlemaster (+54-96).

And that's within the same class. That's before considering really bonkers comparisons like "How many rounds of cantrips does a Wizard need to cast in order for a Fighter to catch up to a single cast of Fireball?"


Fighters hit for, what, ~10 damage per attack, after taking GWM and hit chance into account? x2 attacks per round, x4 in the first round, so we're talking 40 damage in round 1 and 20 each round after for a level 5 Fighter.

We can say Fireball deals about an average of 20 damage per target, after accounting for a 40% save chance, and hits up to 64 targets. Conservatively, you're hitting maybe...5. So 100 average damage. Then you're casting Firebolt each round, for 7 damage each turn (after hit chance).

Turn 1 happens, Fighter deals his 40, Wizard deals his 100. Fighter now has to catch up to 60 damage, with his 13 damage gain per round. That's about 5 rounds.

So if the Fighter's DPR is the standard, all a Wizard has to do to pull their weight, for 6 rounds of combat, is to cast a single Fireball.

Given, the Fighter gets 2 more attacks from his Action Surge for each Short Rest, so that basically translates to an additional +20, or about 2 rounds, per Short Rest.

So if a Wizard has the value of 2 Fireballs in his pocket, and nothing else, you're looking at 12 rounds of combat in a day, -2 rounds for each Short Rest in that day.



So you finally got the balanced numbers that everyone's looking for... And then I had to bring up the Fiend Warlock.


So balance? It's a joke. Something that we demand that's impossible from 5e.

Realistically, it could only happen when either:
Every class has the same resource generation (the 4th Edition method)
Every table has the same encounter frequencies.


And that second one ain't happening. Not unless we're talking about a controlled environment, like a board game or something. Which is why board games are balanced, and DnD is not.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that DnD isn't a good game - you don't need balance to have fun - but those that need it to be balanced are setting themselves up for disappointment.

The lesson here is that "balance shouldn't matter". And if it does matter, understand that you're working with a flawed foundation to begin with. Either change your priorities, or change the game.

[MinotaurWarrior]

Rogues literally can get Stealth under 11 at level 5. Maxing your Dex and putting your expertise into Stealth is not the only way to play a rogue. Not that it matters, as purple worm has blindsight and tremorsense, making obscurement irrelevant and Stealth impossible unless all your rogues can fly.

"A party of five rogues" not "every party of five rogues"

And that's not what tremorsense does. It's hilarious Guy at the Gym to say so, sense the purple wurm is a rip off from the sandwurms of Dune, where a huge amount of the story was dedicated to hiding from their tremorsense.

But even if you play that way, the wurm has tremorsense 60'

A rogue can shoot from further away than that.

[Asisreo1]

"A party of five rogues" not "every party of five rogues"

And that's not what tremorsense does. It's hilarious Guy at the Gym to say so, sense the purple wurm is a rip off from the sandwurms of Dune, where a huge amount of the story was dedicated to hiding from their tremorsense.

But even if you play that way, the wurm has tremorsense 60'

A rogue can shoot from further away than that.
The worm is probably in the ground up until they're in melee range where they pop back up.

They aren't intelligent or anything but I don't see why it wouldn't stay where its comfortable for the majority of its time.

[Mikal]

I'd feel so bad for the 5th level party that tries to fight a purple worm. That's one battle that's definitely going to end in multiple dead adventurers.

Well I mean a deadly encounter should be potentially deadly so...

[MinotaurWarrior]

The worm is probably in the ground up until they're in melee range where they pop back up.

They aren't intelligent or anything but I don't see why it wouldn't stay where its comfortable for the majority of its time.

1) Survival is winning, unless the quest is specifically to kill the wurm

2) The wurm leaves a tunnel in its wake, though it can just keep making turns to break los

I mean a smart worm can punch above its weight class by tunneling up from hundreds of feet below the party and dropping them through the tunnel, but that just adds more weight to the idea that the game PvE simply isn't balanced at any fine tuning level.

[JackPhoenix]

"A party of five rogues" not "every party of five rogues"

What about party of 5 bards? Or a party of 5 humans prodigies, then?


And that's not what tremorsense does. It's hilarious Guy at the Gym to say so, sense the purple wurm is a rip off from the sandwurms of Dune, where a huge amount of the story was dedicated to hiding from their tremorsense.

It literally is what tremorsense does. If you're on the same surface as the worm and not incorporeal, it knows where you are. And I'm not aware Dune was based on 5e ruleset, or vice versa.


But even if you play that way, the wurm has tremorsense 60'

A rogue can shoot from further away than that.

Well, that's great. What use is that against the worm that has no reason to be above ground unless it senses a prey?

[djreynolds]

Playing devil's advocate here.

Theoretically you could not have fighters and monks and warlocks at your table.

This solves the problem.

Will the game diminish because of it?

Can the ranger barbarian and paladin cover down on the fighting man?

Do you need a warlock? You have a wizard sorcerer bard cleric and druid.

I'm not saying to get rid of short rests. But short rest dependent characters.

It forces players to continually advocate for short rests.

It's just a thought

As for how I judge what an encounter is: if you could possibly solve the problem with a spell. Fly or levitate or charm or an illusion... then this could considered an encounter.

[MaxWilson]

1) Survival is winning, unless the quest is specifically to kill the wurm

2) The wurm leaves a tunnel in its wake, though it can just keep making turns to break los

I mean a smart worm can punch above its weight class by tunneling up from hundreds of feet below the party and dropping them through the tunnel, but that just adds more weight to the idea that the game PvE simply isn't balanced at any fine tuning level.

What's a smart Purple Worm? One with Int 2 Wis 9 instead of Int 1 Wis 8? :)

[Boci]

What's a smart Purple Worm? One with Int 2 Wis 9 instead of Int 1 Wis 8? :)

A smart purple wurm is one that utilizing its tunnelling ability to ad an additional danger to the target it strikes. Figuring out how much int and wisdom is require for that, and if the purple worm would do that to human sized targets, is the tricky part.

[MinotaurWarrior]

What about party of 5 bards? Or a party of 5 humans prodigies, then?


They can't hide on a bonus action (except goblin bards) so they are more vulnerable when offending (the purple worm can use its action to investigate).

The point of mentioning rogues specifically though is just that rogues are the class most hurt by a short day (because they are 100% at will) . I'm sure there are other classes that can do it easy. The purple worm doesn't even have ranged attacks.


It literally is what tremorsense does. If you're on the same surface as the worm and not incorporeal, it knows where you are.

Nope, you're wrong. Tremorsense is a sense, just like any other. With the exception of the rogue's level 14 ability blindsense, nothing guarantees you will know a creature's location.

Do you think that creatures with darkvision and true sight can't be hidden from in a dark fog, because their writeup says, "A monster... can see"?



And I'm not aware Dune was based on 5e ruleset, or vice versa.

OK, well, now you know - the purple worm is based on Dune.




Well, that's great. What use is that against the worm that has no reason to be above ground unless it senses a prey?

Guaranteeing your level 5 party survives against a CR15 monster is the use.

[cutlery]

The lesson here is that "balance shouldn't matter". And if it does matter, understand that you're working with a flawed foundation to begin with. Either change your priorities, or change the game.

I think this is only fair if each class has a "combat effectiveness statement" in the PHB; which would probably be in the same box text as the "creating a warlock without eldritch blast and a plan to pick up agonizing blast will increase game difficulty".

Actually, a general "easy to complicated" statement for each class/subclass wouldn't be a terrible idea; particularly now that there isn't really a requirement for a certain diversity in skills in any given party.

[KorvinStarmast]

I think this is only fair if each class has a "combat effectiveness statement" in the PHB; which would probably be in the same box text as the "creating a warlock without eldritch blast and a plan to pick up agonizing blast will increase game difficulty".

Actually, a general "easy to complicated" statement for each class/subclass wouldn't be a terrible idea; particularly now that there isn't really a requirement for a certain diversity in skills in any given party. League of Legends use to have a guide like that, in terms of some of the characters being "high skill quotient" and others more basic. (I prefer something in the middle, but it was fantastic that there were a few easy to play champions when I first started).

[MaxWilson]

A smart purple wurm is one that utilizing its tunnelling ability to ad an additional danger to the target it strikes. Figuring out how much int and wisdom is require for that, and if the purple worm would do that to human sized targets, is the tricky part.

I know, I know. But now I've got the image of a Purple Bookworm with nerd glasses stuck in my head.

I get your point though--there are a lot of straightforward monsters (starting with T-Rexes) that suddenly become a LOT more dangerous if they somehow acquire human-level intelligence or better. Especially if there are enough of them to start organizing themselves. A nation of human-intelligence Purple Worms united under the banner of the telepathic Purple Worm Queen would be... adventure fuel! <scribbles notes to self about a diplomatic adventure where four PCs and four Purple Worms are competing to gain favor/alliance with the Dao, in the context of a larger WWI-style conflict>

You can tell that I just finished Peace Talks/Battle Ground, can't you? :)

[MadBear]

Nope, you're wrong. Tremorsense is a sense, just like any other. With the exception of the rogue's level 14 ability blindsense, nothing guarantees you will know a creature's location.

Do you think that creatures with darkvision and true sight can't be hidden from in a dark fog, because their writeup says, "A monster... can see"?


I don't know that you're on solid ground with that argument. Tremorsense literally says you can pinpoint a creatures location. This definitely feels more like a gray DM call sort of situation.

[Boci]

Tremorsense literally says you can pinpoint a creatures location.

Sort of. "A monster with tremorsense can detect and pinpoint the origin of vibrations within a specific radius, provided that the monster and the source of the vibrations are in contact with the same ground or substance."

You're right that its a DM call, but it seems reasoanble that the creature would have to be moving to produce the vibration the tremorsense pick up. It would also be reasonable to say that any living creature is never 100% still, so it doesn't matter.


I know, I know. But now I've got the image of a Purple Bookworm with nerd glasses stuck in my head.

I get your point though--there are a lot of straightforward monsters (starting with T-Rexes) that suddenly become a LOT more dangerous if they somehow acquire human-level intelligence or better. Especially if there are enough of them to start organizing themselves. A nation of human-intelligence Purple Worms united under the banner of the telepathic Purple Worm Queen would be... adventure fuel! <scribbles notes to self about a diplomatic adventure where four PCs and four Purple Worms are competing to gain favor/alliance with the Dao, in the context of a larger WWI-style conflict>

You can tell that I just finished Peace Talks/Battle Ground, can't you? :)

It will certain;y capture the player attention. They may roll their eyes at first, but if the DM aknolwedges that the creature if behaving more intelligently than it should with no indication as to a cause, they'll start paying attention.

[Keravath]

D&D has an immense range of adventuring days ranging from nothing but exploration or social encounters to a day full of combat to days of rest or days in which only one thing happens.

Any of these can be made challenging and interesting to the party.

However, one point that seems to have been missed is not the DM trying for some mythical distribution of encounters to get a "balanced" game, but rather the expectations of the players that they MIGHT have several more encounters before they can rest in which case they can't afford to use all of their resources at once.

It isn't the ACTUAL 6-8 encounters that is required to balance a day .. it is only the player's belief that there COULD be 6-8 encounters which drives the character decisions in terms of what resources to use. A mid tier 2 party (L7-8) with a wizard or two can drop 3-6 fireballs over a few rounds. That might turn a deadly encounter into an easy one. However, this strategy relies on the metagame knowledge that the DM might be reluctant to give the players another encounter of comparable difficulty again that day. Or ... if the DM is the type to have only one large combat encounter/day then the players (not the characters) know that they are safe to use all their long rest resources since any other encounters that day will be easy or not need resources.

In my opinion, it is the player expectations and resource use that is the issue, not the number of encounters in some mythical adventuring day. A DM needs to include some days with several difficult encounters that force the players to use resource management so that the players just don't always expend all their resources in the first challenging encounter they run into.

The goal is to encourage the players to make a balanced use of their resources ... not turn each day into some 6-8 encouter + 2SR cookie cutter day.


P.S. However, having short rest classes and long rest classes is all about resources ... the short rest ones can get their resources back on a 1 hour rest while the others need an 8 hour rest. Having either one encounter days or several encounter days without a short rest both make short rest classes harder to play so I would say that in a day with several encounters the 5e design assumes that there will be some number of short rests that could be taken by the party but that would be the only actual design constraint from a DM perspective.

[Man_Over_Game]

Of the 49 posts on this thread, 20 have been on purple wormy boi.

[Edit] Sorry, make that 21.

[sophontteks]

The 6-8 encounters guideline is in the chapter on adventures; specifically the section on combat encounters and awarding experience for combat.

The briefest of discussions about experience for noncombat encounters is on DMG p. 261; where it stats "As a starting point, use the rules for building combat encounters in chapter 3".

The entire discussion around number of encounters per day in chapter 3 is centered around combat - social or investigative encounters may use no resources at all (and some classes that can be designed to excel at these sorts of encounters can be designed to do so without the use of any resources at all).

There could be infinite social encounters or trips to the library in the adventuring day. There cannot be infinite combat encounters, as players will eventually get hit and die via chip damage.
While I agree that the information certainly implies combat, we could also say that combat is a potential solution to an encounter, one of many. This may be why they simply stated encounters. But you do have a good point.

Ironically, due to how time works in combat, with it normally finishing in under 1 minute (lol). It's the trips to the library that consume most of the day. This incidently is also why an hour short rest seems so long. Heck thats 60 combat encounters, at a minimum.

[cutlery]

Ironically, due to how time works in combat, with it normally finishing in under 1 minute (lol). It's the trips to the library that consume most of the day. This incidently is also why an hour short rest seems so long. Heck thats 60 combat encounters, at a minimum.

True, DnD combat does appear to happen in bullet time.

For myself, I don't really have a problem with large deviations from 6-8 (mostly) combat encounters and 2 short rests; but if there will be a systematic tendency towards one massive deadly encounter per day, classes with short rest resources (ok, other than Monk) need to get some sort of boost.

Similarly, if there was a tendency towards 14 medium to hard fights per long rest, long rest classes would need some help - but I don't think I've ever heard of such a table existing.

[Man_Over_Game]

True, DnD combat does appear to happen in bullet time.

For myself, I don't really have a problem with large deviations from 6-8 (mostly) combat encounters and 2 short rests; but if there will be a systematic tendency towards one massive deadly encounter per day, classes with short rest resources (ok, other than Monk) need to get some sort of boost.

I like to solve both of these problems by just artificially inserting a Short Rest into an encounter. Like in between boss phases or waves or something. Players can opt into taking the Short Rest right then-and-there, but it costs Exhaustion.

With how rare Exhaustion is, it basically means some of your party will need to rely on the rest for skills, and...that's about it. The "Adrenaline Surge" needs a valid reason for it to not apply in all fights, whenever the heroes demand it, and having an opt-in cost helps solidify that for the players.

[meandean]

Originally Posted by Jeremy Crawford
We do not design the game thinking the correct adventuring day is 6-8 encounters, because many adventuring days might have only 1, some will have 3, some will have 4, that's fine. Those are all legitimate ways to construct a D&D adventure.


To be fair, what else is he supposed to say? Do you think he'd say "you're all doing it wrong, we demand that you play drastically differently"? Of course he's going to confirm that the game can be played in the way that most people actually do play it.

That doesn't change the fact that short-rest vs. long-rest class balance is fakakta. Or, at the very least, that there are a whole lot more tables where it's a disadvantage to be a short-rest-based class, than tables where it's an advantage.

I expect 6E to have a basic assumption of Critical Role-influenced play, meaning it's expected that:


The majority of the session will be RP, not combat
The setting is open-world and player-driven, which further implies:

It's implausible that every one of the innumerable goals that the party can choose is always on a strict timer
Taking a real-life month to play one in-game day feels like We're In The Endgame Now, rather than a natural pace

[cutlery]

I like to solve both of these problems by just artificially inserting a Short Rest into an encounter. Like in between boss phases or waves or something. Players can opt into taking the Short Rest right then-and-there, but it costs Exhaustion.

With how rare Exhaustion is, it basically means some of your party will need to rely on the rest for skills, and...that's about it. The "Adrenaline Surge" needs a valid reason for it to not apply in all fights, whenever the heroes demand it, and having an opt-in cost helps solidify that for the players.

That makes sense to me, though I might give them a constitution save to avoid the exhaustion (that scales up until a long rest), but seems a fair tradeoff.

[Satori01]

The bygone era is a time when the designers actually did balance the game over a certain expectation between encounters and their distribution. As you say, there has always been an expected dungeon-crawl into wilderness areas with a predictable number of encounters within. Now, though, the designers have moved away from DM-controlled resource management.

Things like encounter-based resources like in 4e no longer exist because it set an expectation on when and how a player should use their resource. Unmarrying resources from the designer's expectations allow both the DM and Player themselves to facilitate resource management in a pace they are comfortable with.

So this "bygone era" line...really just means 4e.
3e recommendation was 3-4 encounters, but was just a guideline....and oft ignored.
AD&D and 2e had no guidelines whatsoever.........

So while I think your historical contention is ancillary to your main point, I don't think your historical perspective is a particularly strong argument.

Now CR is in no way analogous to CR, but for a 15th level Character...six CR 2 creatures is a Medium Encounter. XGE's tables indicate a 15th level character can handle 5 CR 2 creatures on their own.

Now a Purple Worm is no CR 15 character, but this further reinforces the idea, that with luck, foresight, planning, and possibly a lot of disposable hirelings.... a 5th level party could take down a Purple Worm.

A 5th level character with the Mark of Handling and an 18 WIS has a 50% chance to Animal Charm the Purple Worm all by themselves.

Time to go Dune all over your enemies.

A Remorhaz has worse WIS saves, but I find are harder in play. Heated Body and being Swallowed is quite painful.

[Tanarii]

How many they can handle without undue risk tells us quite a lot about what the game is balanced around. And let's be clear, it's not "before danger of a TPK", because the devs have been very clear that's not their baseline difficulty many times. IMX before danger of a TPK is about 1-2/3 of an adventuring day, with a short rest roughly every 1/3, in Tier 2.

You certainly don't have to put a full adventuring day in front of your group, or expect them to push on that far, whichever the case may be. But they're not going to find it particularly challenging. Unless you go for an all-in multiple times Deadly fight. And even then if they have lots of nova capability or kiting capability (and room to do so) they'll push the required level for difficult up even more.

As far as short rests go, it's much more explicit about likely need. And I note this quote was left out.

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.
DMG 84

Edit: also, I'm fairly sure the reason this general model was used was because of how official play was working in 4e. It was about 4 encounters in a 4 hour session, with a break between each. 5e is much faster to run of course, so there's room for more encounters in the same time frame. F.ex. When I ran games, I often had parties fit about 1-1/3 adventuring days worth of content into a single 3 hour session. But regardless, I recall this same official play model, with roughly 6 encounters, being common when I played AL DDEX adventures some time ago with 5e. (It's possible the model for 5e AL single session adventures has since changed.)

It may not work so well for home games, and they were clearly aware of that. The language they couched the adventuring day / encounter design in, and the rest variants, clearly show that.

[Pex]

Edit: also, I'm fairly sure the reason this general model was used was because of how official play was working in 4e. It was about 4 encounters in a 4 hour session, with a break between each. 5e is much faster to run of course, so there's room for more encounters in the same time frame. F.ex. When I ran games, I often had parties fit about 1-1/3 adventuring days worth of content into a single 3 hour session. But regardless, I recall this same official play model, with roughly 6 encounters, being common when I played AL DDEX adventures some time ago with 5e. (It's possible the model for 5e AL single session adventures has since changed.)

It may not work so well for home games, and they were clearly aware of that. The language they couched the adventuring day / encounter design in, and the rest variants, clearly show that.

If so they sorely misunderstood the change between how 4E does it and 5E. In 4E everyone benefits from short rests. In 5E it's not everyone other than spending HD for healing. In 4E a short rest is 5 minutes. In 5E a short rest is 1 hour in default mode. A 4E short rest is not the same as a 5E short rest and shouldn't have been treated as such by the game developers.

[sophontteks]

If so they sorely misunderstood the change between how 4E does it and 5E. In 4E everyone benefits from short rests. In 5E it's not everyone other than spending HD for healing. In 4E a short rest is 5 minutes. In 5E a short rest is 1 hour in default mode. A 4E short rest is not the same as a 5E short rest and shouldn't have been treated as such by the game developers.
Time measurements should be taken with a grain of salt, and I think the problem is not what you think.

An hour to short rest is reasonable and would realistically happen quite often. People reasonably need time between fights if they are to continue on with any effeciency, and an hour is not actually a huge sum of time. Remember that short resting includes all the light activity one would be doing to prepare themselves to fight again. (Eating, stretching bandaging wounds, plotting, picking up loot, looking around, cleaning armor and weapons, etc etc )

But combat encounters normally finish in under a minute (5 rounds is 30 seconds). This is completely insane.

This gets worse when you apply skills you can use in combat back into out of combat situations. Where, for example, searching a room takes 6 seconds when IRL it takes me 15 minutes just to find my keys.

From what I see they made a short rest much more reasonable, but left combat time at breakneck speeds. The discrepency makes short rests appear much more unreasonable then they are.

[sophontteks]

Considering the above what I tend to do as a short rest character is take advantage of downtime already present.

If my party is searching a room, or plotting their next steps. Anything of this sort. My monk may decide to meditate during this time. Or my warlock will begin beckoning to his patron for favors. They may participate in light activity as well.

Here I am basically challenging the 6 second time frame. How long, reasonably, is the party taking to do what they are doing. Often it's enough where I can finish a short rest no problem. And if not, no harm done.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Considering the above what I tend to do as a short rest character is take advantage of downtime already present.

If my party is searching a room, or plotting their next steps. Anything of this sort. My monk may decide to meditate during this time. Or my warlock will begin beckoning to his patron for favors. They may participate in light activity as well.

Here I am basically challenging the 6 second time frame. How long, reasonably, is the party taking to do what they are doing. Often it's enough where I can finish a short rest no problem. And if not, no harm done.

Agree. DMs should be more conscious of the time it takes to do other things and let people SR during that. Problem solved.

[Valmark]

I do think that is a reasonable guideline, yes.

In my group irl we did get through 6-8 encounters with two short rests sometimes, and they were indeed through that difficulty range.

We also got through a dungeon with no rests (the first dungeon in Descent into Avernus, Dead Three something) and nearly got TPK'ed by eight kobolds (the start of Hoard of the Dragon Queen should be) then handled all other encounters fairly well, getting one short rest (these were different characters of course).

That section is a guideline- it's not an hard rule, and doesn't pretend to be that. All of the DMG is a giant guideline.

And I don't think anybody would have replied "badly" if that tone in the first post didn't sound like you were delivering some holy scripture, I genuely thought I'd see some giant revelation after the first sentences O.o



On a whole other note, it's funny how the PW thing went on for so long when nearly immediately somebody pointed out how that is well beyond the supposed XP worth of enemies a 5th level party should fight in an encounter. Or maybe only to me.

[MaxWilson]

This gets worse when you apply skills you can use in combat back into out of combat situations. Where, for example, searching a room takes 6 seconds when IRL it takes me 15 minutes just to find my keys.

Heh. In theory putting on my shoes in the morning and walking out the door and fifteen feet to my car should only take 6-10 seconds, but somehow by clock time it always takes 2-3 minutes. I can't even blame this on 5E, because I really am capable of doing this in 10 seconds if pressed! But somehow work expands to fill the amount of time available to do it, especially when you're relaxed.

I apply this same principle to D&D by having offscreen monsters take reasonably-long amounts of time to get themselves organized even after they become aware that PCs are infiltrating their dungeon/lair. If you got spotted while kidnapping a hobgoblin captain from his bunk, it could be ten minutes or more between when the hobgoblin alarm gong goes off and when the hobgoblin counterattack of fifty Hobgoblins and a Devastator arrives. (I.e. if you fast enough you may still catch them in small groups, or see unarmored hobgoblins just getting out of the shower, or catch the Devastator giving a briefing to the hobgoblin sergeants while they quickly plan their counterattack.)

[MinotaurWarrior]

On a whole other note, it's funny how the PW thing went on for so long when nearly immediately somebody pointed out how that is well beyond the supposed XP worth of enemies a 5th level party should fight in an encounter. Or maybe only to me.

That just amplifies the point: 5e isn't balanced around any sort of XP budget.

Famously, on an open field the Terrasque (CR 30) can be easily defeated by a single level 1 pc on a mount with a ranged weapon, such as a halfling ranger, because it lacks ranged attacks and has the same movement as a mastiff.

Almost as famously, you can make an "easy" encounter out of low CR spellcasters in an advantageous situation and likely wreck a level 20 party.

The PvE isn't balanced like how a PvP game (such as mtg limited or LoL) is, where the game system and game elements themselves make it so that you get the desired difficulty and requirements of skill for success.

DnD is set up for PCs to succeed with a cooperative DM, and features like CR aren't there for balance, but for fun. A Terrasque is more fun to fight at high level, because by then you might then have a chance to win using tactics that are less cheesy, such as letting your fighter get up close and swing a sword at it.

[Pex]

Agree. DMs should be more conscious of the time it takes to do other things and let people SR during that. Problem solved.

I agree there, but they don't. Just traveling along the road or forest path where nothing happens ("After a couple of hours you reach town", "Two hours later you find a small lake in a clearing.") should count as a short rest, but DMs won't allow it. They insist the party stay in one place doing nothing for an hour. That's why you get Rope Trick and Leomund's Tiny Hut shenanigans and the warlock argues with the sorcerer for the party to stop and rest. However, the DM has a legitimate counterpoint in that it is hours between encounters/combat almost all the time unless it's a dungeon crawl. That would allow a short rest after every fight which overly boosts short rest dependent characters. Then someone suggests using Gritty Realism rules which means everything needs to be recalculated and you can run into not having the proper long rest per game session ratio causing player frustration from the long rest dependent characters.

What we come back to is the problem is not how long a short rest is, but the mistake of making some classes short rest dependent while others are long rest dependent. Not everyone is having a rest problem, but it is happening often enough to be a problem for a lot of people. 4E's method of having everyone benefit from short rests and long rests was fine. That's not what caused the samey problem. The samey problem was everyone used the same mechanics and the powers were too similar to each other, just changing the color type of the damage in many cases. 5E does it right by giving everyone different mechanics for things and different effects for those things.

A 5E sorcerer would have been happy and willing to short rest with the warlock if keeping his spell slots long rest dependent his sorcery points for metamagic was short rest dependent. Give the cleric and paladin more Channel Divinity uses. Have a barbarian's number of rages be short rest dependent. Give everyone a reason to want to short rest. Alternatively, go pre-4E and have everything be long rest dependent again, no short rests. Going by the popular x3 house rule, Warlocks get 6 spell slots per day. Monks have 3 times their level in Ki. Battle Masters have 12 superiority die uses per day. Players can still have HD healing ported over from 4E.

[MaxWilson]

I agree there, but they don't. Just traveling along the road or forest path where nothing happens ("After a couple of hours you reach town", "Two hours later you find a small lake in a clearing.") should count as a short rest, but DMs won't allow it. They insist the party stay in one place doing nothing for an hour.

Well, they're not wrong that walking doesn't count as a rest. "A short rest is a period of downtime, at least 1 hour long, during which a character does nothing more strenuous than eating, drinking, reading, and tending to wounds." So maybe that wasn't the best example? Or are you thinking of a scenario where the PCs are riding a coach or a train for an hour instead of walking or riding? (Riding a horse is still quite strenuous, I have read, and my limited experience confirms.)


What we come back to is the problem is not how long a short rest is, but the mistake of making some classes short rest dependent while others are long rest dependent. Not everyone is having a rest problem, but it is happening often enough to be a problem for a lot of people.

Totally agree with this part. Putting the classes on different rest schedules has caused unnecessary friction. They should have just stuck to at will/per-day/per-week stuff, instead of at-will/per-short-rest/per-day.

[KorvinStarmast]

What we come back to is the problem is not how long a short rest is, but the mistake of making some classes short rest dependent while others are long rest dependent. Not everyone is having a rest problem, but it is happening often enough to be a problem for a lot of people.

A 5E sorcerer would have been happy and willing to short rest with the warlock if keeping his spell slots long rest dependent his sorcery points for metamagic was short rest dependent. Give the cleric and paladin more Channel Divinity uses. Have a barbarian's number of rages be short rest dependent. Give everyone a reason to want to short rest. Yes, it can get kind of clunky.

[cutlery]

Yes, it can get kind of clunky.

I've even heard of groups that never take a short rest. Or: always take a long rest.

Even in groups that know better, it can take some lobbying for the player of a mostly short-rest character to talk them into taking a short rest.

[Dork_Forge]

I agree there, but they don't. Just traveling along the road or forest path where nothing happens ("After a couple of hours you reach town", "Two hours later you find a small lake in a clearing.") should count as a short rest, but DMs won't allow it. They insist the party stay in one place doing nothing for an hour. That's why you get Rope Trick and Leomund's Tiny Hut shenanigans and the warlock argues with the sorcerer for the party to stop and rest. However, the DM has a legitimate counterpoint in that it is hours between encounters/combat almost all the time unless it's a dungeon crawl. That would allow a short rest after every fight which overly boosts short rest dependent characters. Then someone suggests using Gritty Realism rules which means everything needs to be recalculated and you can run into not having the proper long rest per game session ratio causing player frustration from the long rest dependent characters.

What we come back to is the problem is not how long a short rest is, but the mistake of making some classes short rest dependent while others are long rest dependent. Not everyone is having a rest problem, but it is happening often enough to be a problem for a lot of people. 4E's method of having everyone benefit from short rests and long rests was fine. That's not what caused the samey problem. The samey problem was everyone used the same mechanics and the powers were too similar to each other, just changing the color type of the damage in many cases. 5E does it right by giving everyone different mechanics for things and different effects for those things.

A 5E sorcerer would have been happy and willing to short rest with the warlock if keeping his spell slots long rest dependent his sorcery points for metamagic was short rest dependent. Give the cleric and paladin more Channel Divinity uses. Have a barbarian's number of rages be short rest dependent. Give everyone a reason to want to short rest. Alternatively, go pre-4E and have everything be long rest dependent again, no short rests. Going by the popular x3 house rule, Warlocks get 6 spell slots per day. Monks have 3 times their level in Ki. Battle Masters have 12 superiority die uses per day. Players can still have HD healing ported over from 4E.

Max already addressed that walking in no way constitutes a short rest, nor should it. There's nothing restful about hiking with your adventuring pack on, if it was then travel time and rest time would be the same thing.

I completely agree that all classes should get some measure of benefit from a short rest though, it would lead to a much better balanced selection of classes. IMO Arcane Recovery is where Wizards cross north of the balance line, everyone getting more out of short rests might change that.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Max already addressed that walking in no way constitutes a short rest, nor should it. There's nothing restful about hiking with your adventuring pack on, if it was then travel time and rest time would be the same thing.

I completely agree that all classes should get some measure of benefit from a short rest though, it would lead to a much better balanced selection of classes. IMO Arcane Recovery is where Wizards cross north of the balance line, everyone getting more out of short rests might change that.

I was thinking more about "investigating a site/looking for loot/etc" where you're mostly immobile. Or waiting for the rogue to do some scouting ahead while everyone else hangs back. Because overland travelling, in my experience, rarely has enough back-to-back encounters to need short rests.

But my guess (and it's only a guess) is that the devs considered everyone to benefit from SR due to HP depletion (and needing to spend HD). Plus the whole "we're a team, so if the warlock says 'hey guys, I'm running low, can we stop for a bit' they'll do it even if they don't gain anything" mentality. But when out-of-combat healing (cf healing spirit, aura of vitality) is big enough to cover without needing to spend HD, that breaks down. A potential stop-gap solution is for DMs to not focus fire. Spread the damage, so everyone feels like a SR gives them something. As well as build adventure sites that provide opportunities to SR, but not to LR on most days. Not the most elegant solution, but it works. Honestly, I've not had issues with this because the players work together--even if one doesn't need it, that lets them scout|investigate|stand guard|whatever while the others take their SR.

[Edea]

(Tentative PHB-Only Short Rest Analysis)

"Recess!"
=========
Monk (Ki)
Warlock (spells)
Fighter (Action Surge, Second Wind, superiority dice)
Bard (Song of Rest, Font of Inspiration)
Druid (Wild Shape(Moon), Natural Recovery(Land))
Wizard (Arcane Recovery)

"Meh..."
========
Cleric (Channel Divinity)
Paladin (Channel Divinity)

"No, let's keep going."
=================
Barbarian (Relentless Rage, which rarely triggers and is high-tier)
Rogue (Stroke of Luck, which is level friggin' 20)
Sorcerer (Sorcerous Restoration, which is level friggin' 20)
Ranger (I...didn't see any short-rest stuff for this class)

[cutlery]

(Tentative PHB-Only Short Rest Analysis)

"Recess!"
=========
Monk (Ki)
Warlock (spells)
Fighter (Action Surge, Second Wind, superiority dice)
Bard (Song of Rest, Font of Inspiration)
Druid (Wild Shape(Moon), Natural Recovery(Land))
Wizard (Arcane Recovery)

"Meh..."
========
Cleric (Channel Divinity)
Paladin (Channel Divinity)

"No, let's keep going."
=================
Barbarian (Relentless Rage, which rarely triggers and is high-tier)
Rogue (Stroke of Luck, which is level friggin' 20)
Sorcerer (Sorcerous Restoration, which is level friggin' 20)
Ranger (I...didn't see any short-rest stuff for this class)

Arcane recovery is closer to the meh category; depending on how much the DM is squeezing the players for resources. Nice, but at level 5 that's one 3rd level spell (or three 1st level ones) when they usually have a total of 9 to cast, at level 10, one 5th level spell (when they usually have 15 to cast). They've got other spells. If and when their LR resources are really low, sure - it will help.

I'd put Druids in the same boat, depending on how critical wild shape is to their playstyle.

They sure aren't asking for them as often as the Warlock or Fighter. And after they've taken the one, they are in the "keep going" category for the rest of the day.

[MaxWilson]

I was thinking more about "investigating a site/looking for loot/etc" where you're mostly immobile. Or waiting for the rogue to do some scouting ahead while everyone else hangs back. Because overland travelling, in my experience, rarely has enough back-to-back encounters to need short rests.

100% agree on the bolded bit. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, if the Rogue goes scouting for an hour while you wait, you don't even have to tell me as DM you're "taking a short rest." You can just ask if you've been waiting for at least an hour, and if so you can just have your Action Surges/spell slots/etc. back without even telling me you're doing it--I'm not your babysitter, I expect you to manage your own character sheet.

[Valmark]

Arcane recovery is closer to the meh category; depending on how much the DM is squeezing the players for resources. Nice, but at level 5 that's one 3rd level spell (or three 1st level ones) when they usually have a total of 9 to cast, at level 10, one 5th level spell (when they usually have 15 to cast). They've got other spells. If and when their LR resources are really low, sure - it will help.

I'd put Druids in the same boat, depending on how critical wild shape is to their playstyle.

They sure aren't asking for them as often as the Warlock or Fighter. And after they've taken the one, they are in the "keep going" category for the rest of the day.

To be fair, until level 13 Arcane Recovery can regenerate the best slot the wizard has access to. That is a detail that makes AE pretty good, even afterwards honestly.

[KorvinStarmast]

I've even heard of groups that never take a short rest. Or: always take a long rest.

Even in groups that know better, it can take some lobbying for the player of a mostly short-rest character to talk them into taking a short rest. Like my cleric in our first 5e game that started in 2014. It took our group months to finally get a consensus on short rests, and the DM didn't like them much anyway. :smallyuk:


"Meh..."
========
Cleric (Channel Divinity)
Paladin (Channel Divinity) Nope. not Meh. Learned that the hard way. (See above)
Channel Divinity matters.
1. Turn undead.
2. Various domain features (check out what life cleric has for Channel Divinity ...)

[Valmark]

Nope. not Meh. Learned that the hard way. (See above)
Channel Divinity matters.
1. Turn undead.
2. Various domain features (check out what life cleric has for Channel Divinity ...)

Eh... Kinda dependant on campaigns. Currently playing a life cleric and I never needed CD more then twice in a day.

Then an undead-centric campaign comes around and suddenly Turn Undead is the best feature ever, until you see the group easily doing without (though that one time the boss got Turned was awesome).

[Asisreo1]

I've even heard of groups that never take a short rest. Or: always take a long rest.

Even in groups that know better, it can take some lobbying for the player of a mostly short-rest character to talk them into taking a short rest.
Is health never a concern in these groups? Many of the characters that say they don't need long rests are usually because they weren't ever targetted to begin with.

Your HD gives you nearly twice your health back overall and one-and-a-half per long rest after. This is a significant amount of health that all groups that are being challenged will actually need.

Rogues, Barbarians, Sorcerers, and Rangers have great uses for their health. Barbarians become extra meaty. A 5th-level Barbarian has 55 maximum HP but an additional 50 HP in reserve. Able to withstand over 100 HP worth of damage at level 5 yet it would be extremely wasteful not to use it in an actually challenging situation.

Rogues and Sorcerers have a similar but somewhat distinct situation. They have only d8's and d6's as HD. Where the Barb has 55 HP, the Rogue has 38 or 43. The sorcerer has roughly 37. A CR 5 creature, gladiator, can do 33 melee damage or 26 ranged damage on a primarily melee focused character. Even accounting for higher AC, a single hit from a creature like this could do about a third of a weaker member's HP. Even with rogue's half damage, they're still likely to take a good chunk of damage within 2 encounters. It's not like enemies don't often have a ranged option in their arsenal.

[Dork_Forge]

I was thinking more about "investigating a site/looking for loot/etc" where you're mostly immobile. Or waiting for the rogue to do some scouting ahead while everyone else hangs back. Because overland travelling, in my experience, rarely has enough back-to-back encounters to need short rests.

But my guess (and it's only a guess) is that the devs considered everyone to benefit from SR due to HP depletion (and needing to spend HD). Plus the whole "we're a team, so if the warlock says 'hey guys, I'm running low, can we stop for a bit' they'll do it even if they don't gain anything" mentality. But when out-of-combat healing (cf healing spirit, aura of vitality) is big enough to cover without needing to spend HD, that breaks down. A potential stop-gap solution is for DMs to not focus fire. Spread the damage, so everyone feels like a SR gives them something. As well as build adventure sites that provide opportunities to SR, but not to LR on most days. Not the most elegant solution, but it works. Honestly, I've not had issues with this because the players work together--even if one doesn't need it, that lets them scout|investigate|stand guard|whatever while the others take their SR.

If the party is stationary whilst the Rogue scouts then I'd have no issue with it (personally I've never been in a party or DM'd one where one or two characters scouted ahead alone for anywhere near that period of time). Investigating an area or looking for loot doesn't seem like rest to me though, personal preferences.

[PhoenixPhyre]

If the party is stationary whilst the Rogue scouts then I'd have no issue with it (personally I've never been in a party or DM'd one where one or two characters scouted ahead alone for anywhere near that period of time). Investigating an area or looking for loot doesn't seem like rest to me though, personal preferences.

But while everyone else (that doesn't need a SR) is investigating or looking for loot, the warlock can do his thing. If the table expectation is that doing a thorough search of an area takes ~1 hour unless you say you're time-constrained, then it becomes part of the default flow. Clear out a floor/discrete area of the adventure site; those that took damage or need to recharge take a SR while everyone else stands guard or searches carefully. And you can do things like pass any discovered books, papers, etc back to someone who's taking a SR--reading is explicitly allowed. And I'd allow someone to investigate, say, a fresco or runes on a doorway as part of a short rest.

The trick is to readjust expectations around time. If "searching a room" or "decyphering the runes" or "scouting ahead" isn't thought of as something that takes single-digit minutes, then things like rituals and SR become way more attainable. And you push back against the whole 5-minute day thing--doing anything worth doing is going to take hours. Which makes sense--I've now spent an hour today just making little changes to a configuration, rebuilding the container and testing.

[cutlery]

To be fair, until level 13 Arcane Recovery can regenerate the best slot the wizard has access to. That is a detail that makes AE pretty good, even afterwards honestly.

(1) once per day, and (2) if they've cast it.

If I can get back 5 levels of spells and I've cast 2 2nd level spells and 1 1st level spell, I'm probably not super excited about a short rest. I might use it if we take one, but I'll probably feel okay to carry on, especially if I've not used my higher level slots yet.

Unlike, say, a warlock, who has no choice but to spend a short rest slot if they spend a slot at all (5th and below).


Is health never a concern in these groups? Many of the characters that say they don't need long rests are usually because they weren't ever targetted to begin with.

Health restoration out of combat is never a concern with a one encounter per long rest adventuring day.

[MaxWilson]

To be fair, until level 13 Arcane Recovery can regenerate the best slot the wizard has access to. That is a detail that makes AE pretty good, even afterwards honestly.

13th level? Why not 11th level? At 11th level wizards have 6th level slots, but Arcane Recovery can only give you 5th level slots.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Health restoration out of combat is never a concern with a one encounter per long rest adventuring day.

Which is why that (1 encounter/long rest)'s the pathological case if you're doing it as a steady diet. Occasionally in the context of generally longer days? No problem. But if it's a steady diet, then short rests just don't mean anything. Neither do hit dice. Which means you need to reframe the entire system. Not just tripling (or so) short rest resources, but giving much larger health pools (roughly 1.5x if it's a sustained thing).

[Pex]

Well, they're not wrong that walking doesn't count as a rest. "A short rest is a period of downtime, at least 1 hour long, during which a character does nothing more strenuous than eating, drinking, reading, and tending to wounds." So maybe that wasn't the best example? Or are you thinking of a scenario where the PCs are riding a coach or a train for an hour instead of walking or riding? (Riding a horse is still quite strenuous, I have read, and my limited experience confirms.)



Totally agree with this part. Putting the classes on different rest schedules has caused unnecessary friction. They should have just stuck to at will/per-day/per-week stuff, instead of at-will/per-short-rest/per-day.

There's the rub. How strenuous is walking or riding a horse when nothing happens? You may be right doing so prevents a short rest officially, but I keep witnessing players ask if that counts as a short rest especially when it's way more than two hours later. Even accepting walking/riding prevents rest, since nothing happened in those 2, 3, 4, 5, hours the party couldn't have stopped, not moving, and get the rest anyway? DMs are refusing even that.

[Valmark]

13th level? Why not 11th level? At 11th level wizards have 6th level slots, but Arcane Recovery can only give you 5th level slots.
My PHB and online sources say 6th though?

(1) once per day, and (2) if they've cast it.

If I can get back 5 levels of spells and I've cast 2 2nd level spells and 1 1st level spell, I'm probably not super excited about a short rest. I might use it if we take one, but I'll probably feel okay to carry on, especially if I've not used my higher level slots yet.

Unlike, say, a warlock, who has no choice but to spend a short rest slot if they spend a slot at all (5th and below).


By then you are casting 5th level spells- if you consumed those slots you don't need a short rest in the first place.

Don't get me wrong- I'm not saying wizards are dependant on short rests, just that AR is far from being meh.
Also yeah, if it was more then once a day it'd be broken. A warlock would be crying in a corner too.

[cutlery]

My PHB and online sources say 6th though?


By then you are casting 5th level spells- if you consumed those slots you don't need a short rest in the first place.

Don't get me wrong- I'm not saying wizards are dependant on short rests, just that AR is far from being meh.

One more 5th level spell is meh by that definition - the Wizard isn't likely to be clamoring for one as soon as the warlock, and they sure as hell don't give a crap after they've already used AR.



Which is why that (1 encounter/long rest)'s the pathological case if you're doing it as a steady diet. Occasionally in the context of generally longer days? No problem. But if it's a steady diet, then short rests just don't mean anything.


No arguments here - but I suspect the one encounter per long rest table is far more common than the 6-8 encounter per long rest table.

I'd add to that that it is a balance problem that should have come out in playtesting.

[PhoenixPhyre]

No arguments here - but I suspect the one encounter per long rest table is far more common than the 6-8 encounter per long rest table.

I'd add to that that it is a balance problem that should have come out in playtesting.

Honestly, 1 encounter per long rest goes against the entire design of the game. It's a "don't do this" case, because otherwise you have to rewrite everything. And systems that handle 1 encounter per long rest as a default gracefully don't usually also handle N encounters/long rest. The 5-minute working day was a huge issue in 3e as well, which didn't have the LR/SR distinction. And 4e was designed around more than one encounter per day--otherwise the "daily/encounter" distinction (and healing surges to a degree) break down.

And you can do 1 encounter per LR as long as it's not the default. Balance is over the whole campaign (or arc), not over individual days.

[Asisreo1]

My PHB and online sources say 6th though?

It's telling you which slots cannot be made: 6th and above. I agree that's its a very strange way to explain the power, especially in the context of other powers of a similar nature.


No arguments here - but I suspect the one encounter per long rest table is far more common than the 6-8 encounter per long rest table.

I'd add to that that it is a balance problem that should have come out in playtesting.
I had caught myself into a stupor trying to demystify the arguments you've been making throughout the thread. Specifically, I've wondered how a "5-minute workday" could benefit anyone more than the short-rest loving classes.

I think I've deciphered the disconnect between our group and whichever others you seem to be referencing: The DM's don't properly track time. A day lasts for the full 24-hours and a long rest isn't available until then.



Let me first explain a one-encounter travel day: I'm in agreement that walking doesn't constitute a short rest. However, a party can only walk for 8 hours unless they risk a forced march or are high enough level to cast a big enough spell like teleport. Then, a party must spend 8 hours resting. If a single encounter takes less than an hour (basically always), the party has a whole 8 hours of downtime. That's alot of time for a warlock to benefit from consecutive short rests. The party isn't going anywhere. If they did, they'd be exhausted.

Anyways, a warlock gets 8 whole hours of short resting into spellcasting. Even if the DM takes away from the last hour, that's still 7 short rests that the warlock can just take. That's 14 fly's, 14 invisibility, 14 charm persons, 14 Major Images. These don't include the short rest patron spells and features like Plant Growth, Command, Detect Thoughts, Clairvoyance, Sending, Fey Presence, Dark One's Own Luck.

There's no way to prevent this, it's within the design of the game. If you throw another encounter to interrupt, congrats, it's no longer a 1-encounter day and those that went NOVA the first time are now feeling the heat. They can't walk a significant distance anymore. They just have to wait and do things like craft, cast spells, and other downtime activities.

[cutlery]

Honestly, 1 encounter per long rest goes against the entire design of the game.


But it fits neatly with how people play it - at this point they should just relent and design with that in mind.

[PhoenixPhyre]

But it fits neatly with how people play it - at this point they should just relent and design with that in mind.

That would mean redesigning the entire system from the ground up. CR, all abilities, HP, HD, etc. That's not a fix, that's a new edition.

And I disagree that "one encounter days" are the default. The published adventures I've read don't do that at all (unless you manage to pull a whole day's worth of encounters into one like I did once...oops). Nothing in the system tells you that that's an option. In fact, everything in the system tells you the opposite, that one encounter days should be a rarity. From the adventuring day section to the design of the classes. Everything. So in fact, those who insist on using a pitchfork as a shovel shouldn't get some abomination of a pitchfork-shovel, they should be told to use the tool as designed or use a different tool.

And the pathology only happens when
* a majority of days are single-encounter (with this set as an expectation)
* very few, if any, have anything else
* DM doesn't enforce the other time requirements (like 8 hours of marching and long rests every 24 hours, not less).

[cutlery]

That would mean redesigning the entire system from the ground up. CR, all abilities, HP, HD, etc. That's not a fix, that's a new edition.

And I disagree that "one encounter days" are the default.

I'm not arguing it is the default - but how a lot of people play it. How the game gets played differs from how it is designed - this was the ultimate failure of 4e, after all.

If they're going to have SR and LR powers, nearly all class should have a smattering of both, across the level range (and these should be meaningful). Classes that have only one or the other should be a rare exception.

With how generally easy it is regain hitpoints, those don't qualify for a LR resource anymore.

Add to that how tedious combat can be and one big fight per LR isn't all that surprising. The scads and scads of threads about the five minute adventuring day ought to be a strong indicator that it isn't rare.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'm not arguing it is the default - but how a lot of people play it. How the game gets played differs from how it is designed - this was the ultimate failure of 4e, after all.

If they're going to have SR and LR powers, nearly all class should have a smattering of both, across the level range (and these should be meaningful). Classes that have only one or the other should be a rare exception.

With how generally easy it is regain hitpoints, those don't qualify for a LR resource anymore.

Add to that how tedious combat can be and one big fight per LR isn't all that surprising. The scads and scads of threads about the five minute adventuring day ought to be a strong indicator that it isn't rare.

I don't support making wholesale changes to appease people who refuse to read the books. Because that's what is required to pull the 5-minute-working-day and suggest that it's anywhere near a supported option. Just like the appropriate support response to someone hammering in nails with their iPhone is "sorry, not a supported use", people have to be responsible for their own breakage when they use things way outside of specs.

Should they be even clearer that you're expected to have more than one fight per adventuring day much of the time? Sure. But when people don't read what's there already (as evidenced by all the "asking a question that's literally written in the text" threads)...

[cutlery]

I don't support making wholesale changes to appease people who refuse to read the books. Because that's what is required to pull the 5-minute-working-day and suggest that it's anywhere near a supported option. Just like the appropriate support response to someone hammering in nails with their iPhone is "sorry, not a supported use", people have to be responsible for their own breakage when they use things way outside of specs.

Should they be even clearer that you're expected to have more than one fight per adventuring day much of the time? Sure. But when people don't read what's there already (as evidenced by all the "asking a question that's literally written in the text" threads)...

That position doesn’t change those tables.

WotC needs to sell books more than they need to do anything else, and the five minute adventuring day should very much be a consideration for a 5.5 or 6e.

[Edea]

For the classes that get very little out of short rests, what sorts of things might be added to them to give more encouragement? It seems it'd be easier to add that to the four-or-so classes that don't give a crap than try to remove short-rest mechanics from the other eight-ish.

[PhoenixPhyre]

That position doesn’t change those tables.

WotC needs to sell books more than they need to do anything else, and the five minute adventuring day should very much be a consideration for a 5.5 or 6e.
Catering to the 5 minute working day would mean that I would have much reduced interest in a hypothetical 5.5e. D&D is balanced around attrition. And a single combat cannot provide that. So the only viable classes and builds are those that can Nova hard. And that's super limiting as a design space.

They considered it. And decided it was wrong and they weren't going to support it. We should not support using a pitchfork as a soup spoon. Doing so makes it good at neither job.

[Tanarii]

I've even heard of groups that never take a short rest. Or: always take a long rest.

Even in groups that know better, it can take some lobbying for the player of a mostly short-rest character to talk them into taking a short rest.
My experience was that it was long rest character that do the most lobbying. Same as in every edition of D&D. Even when the choice is End Session and Everyone Goes Go Home and Long Rest vs Keep Playing, LR caster types will be like "oh I'm out of spells, guess I'm done, GG tonight guys!" Or just mentally check out.

[cutlery]

Catering to the 5 minute working day would mean that I would have much reduced interest in a hypothetical 5.5e. D&D is balanced around attrition. And a single combat cannot provide that. So the only viable classes and builds are those that can Nova hard. And that's super limiting as a design space.

They considered it. And decided it was wrong and they weren't going to support it. We should not support using a pitchfork as a soup spoon. Doing so makes it good at neither job.

They need to do more than consider it and decide it is wrong - they need to place firm guidelines about resource attrition in both the PHB and the DMG, because the current system does little to preclude the 5 minute adventuring day.

[Asisreo1]

That position doesn’t change those tables.

WotC needs to sell books more than they need to do anything else, and the five minute adventuring day should very much be a consideration for a 5.5 or 6e.
One system cannot appease everyone. There's always going to be tables that would prefer to play a different way than the base system. That doesn't make it bad. It's like being upset that magic is an intrinsic part of D&D. Yeah, it's one of the core assumptions of the game.

Not trying to kick them out of D&D, but some groups will be far better served playing a different system.

That said, I haven't encountered a DM that ever religiously follow a once-a-day adventure design. Even new DM's have their main adventure have around 3-4 encounters or try to force themselves into 6-8. Sure, sometimes they'll add an adventure day where its just the party vs the BBEG. But overall, I've never met anyone that only runs a single encounter consistently over a campaign's adventuring day.

[cutlery]

One system cannot appease everyone. There's always going to be tables that would prefer to play a different way than the base system. That doesn't make it bad. It's like being upset that magic is an intrinsic part of D&D. Yeah, it's one of the core assumptions of the game.

Not trying to kick them out of D&D, but some groups will be far better served playing a different system.

That said, I haven't encountered a DM that ever religiously follow a once-a-day adventure design. Even new DM's have their main adventure have around 3-4 encounters or try to force themselves into 6-8. Sure, sometimes they'll add an adventure day where its just the party vs the BBEG. But overall, I've never met anyone that only runs a single encounter consistently over a campaign's adventuring day.

Then why are there so many conversations about the five minute adventuring day?

You might think the system isn’t designed for it, but a wealth of players end up playing it that way. You argue they’re playing it wrong - ok, fine. But remember that books need to be sold, and if this balance tips, the system will change to suit. Maybe not this edition, but next, sure.


Moving away from short and long rest resources would be exactly this sort of change.

[Asisreo1]

Then why are there so many conversations about the five minute adventuring day?

I still don't know what you're talking about with all these "five minute adventuring days." I haven't seen a thread about it any time recently and I rarely see them in the forums outside of a "these are bad, don't do them" warning. I don't think I've ever actually seen anyone reference a 5 minute workday within 2 months at a time even in the popular subreddits.



You might think the system isn’t designed for it, but a wealth of players end up playing it that way. You argue they’re playing it wrong - ok, fine. But remember that books need to be sold, and if this balance tips, the system will change to suit. Maybe not this edition, but next, sure.


Moving away from short and long rest resources would be exactly this sort of change.
They may do so next edition, they may not. I'm not sure that you know what D&D's main target audience is, though. If you're thinking it's anyone older than college students with plenty of time, you're probably incorrect.

Although, I'm sure people will complain anyways. If the game does something like encounter-powers that the game guarantees, DM's will most likely complain because they now have a more narrow frame of their adventure. The system as-is is much more freeform than 4e and, maybe, 3.5e.

[cutlery]

I still don't know what you're talking about with all these "five minute adventuring days." I haven't seen a thread about it any time recently

It may come as some shock to you, then, that these forums are not representative of all the players of the game. There are plenty of others, with tens of thousands of subscribers, and many other players that never post anywhere.

[Asisreo1]

It may come as some shock to you, then, that these forums are not representative of all the players of the game. There are plenty of others, with tens of thousands of subscribers, and many other players that never post anywhere.
Yeah, and neither of those that I've interacted with have mentioned this either.

If the sample size you're mentioning are those which can't possibly verify their encounter number to completeness, why are you so confident that it's any more common than more than, say, 10% of groups that do so?

[cutlery]

Yeah, and neither of those that I've interacted with have mentioned this either.

If the sample size you're mentioning are those which can't possibly verify their encounter number to completeness, why are you so confident that it's any more common than more than, say, 10% of groups that do so?

If we are comparing anecdotes? 100%.

If we are comparing convenience samples of Internet forums? Also 100%.

Neither of us has access to a representative sample of money-paying players, and the players that pay money are, ultimately, the ones that matter to WotC.

[Dork_Forge]

But while everyone else (that doesn't need a SR) is investigating or looking for loot, the warlock can do his thing. If the table expectation is that doing a thorough search of an area takes ~1 hour unless you say you're time-constrained, then it becomes part of the default flow. Clear out a floor/discrete area of the adventure site; those that took damage or need to recharge take a SR while everyone else stands guard or searches carefully. And you can do things like pass any discovered books, papers, etc back to someone who's taking a SR--reading is explicitly allowed. And I'd allow someone to investigate, say, a fresco or runes on a doorway as part of a short rest.

The trick is to readjust expectations around time. If "searching a room" or "decyphering the runes" or "scouting ahead" isn't thought of as something that takes single-digit minutes, then things like rituals and SR become way more attainable. And you push back against the whole 5-minute day thing--doing anything worth doing is going to take hours. Which makes sense--I've now spent an hour today just making little changes to a configuration, rebuilding the container and testing.

Oh I thought you meant that searching wasn't strenuous enough to prevent a rest, if at any time a PC just plops down and rests whilst the rest of the party does something of course it's a rest.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Yeah, and neither of those that I've interacted with have mentioned this either.

If the sample size you're mentioning are those which can't possibly verify their encounter number to completeness, why are you so confident that it's any more common than more than, say, 10% of groups that do so?

Exactly. Noise is not a good measure of prevalence.


If we are comparing anecdotes? 100%.

If we are comparing convenience samples of Internet forums? Also 100%.

Neither of us has access to a representative sample of money-paying players, and the players that pay money are, ultimately, the ones that matter to WotC.

Noise about things does not actually translate into actual problems. Airplane crashes are stupidly rare. But when one happens, there's tons of noise and talk about it.

In my experience, the only ones pushing for 5-minute days are those who either
* don't really want to be playing D&D in the first place (ie combat is something they don't want where possible in any form)
* are still hung up on old editions and refusing to set those ways aside.

Neither one of those would be mollified by pandering to them. And by doing so you'd do tremendous violence to what a lot of people enjoy. A 1-encounter day inevitably means that
* only nova builds are viable
* combat is a solved problem--nova hard, nova fast. Rocket tag for life.
* the default will inevitably slide toward this broken style

5-minute days as a supported standard option are incompatible with longer, more varied days. The two require significantly different designs and can't really coexist. Although it's easier to fudge a multi-encounter paradigm into a one-encounter paradigm than the reverse. Still a poor fit for either and with lots of distortions on the adventures you can run, but easier to do what we're doing now and let those who want a 1-encounter system adjust than vice versa. And trying to do both of them simultaneously would simply make things way more confusing--you'd need two alternate class sets, alternate encounter design guidelines, etc.


Oh I thought you meant that searching wasn't strenuous enough to prevent a rest, if at any time a PC just plops down and rests whilst the rest of the party does something of course it's a rest.

Yeah. The trick is making sure that DMs and players realize that searching/etc isn't something that happens in an action or even a minute. It's a long, drawn out procedure if you want to be thorough. And translating things isn't easy either, even from modern languages to other modern languages. Especially if it's complex stuff.

Reading through a bunch of papers on someone's desk? Unless you know exactly what you're looking for and they're organized, count on half an hour minimum to figure out if there's anything relevant there at all. Deciphering runes? I can't imagine it's any faster. Figuring out the workings of an steam-punk device? Heck, troubleshooting my docker stack takes 10s of minutes and it's pretty simple and I know what I'm doing and looking for.

It's all about reframing expectations. Doing so solves a huge chunk of the "hurry up" problem by itself.

[SiCK_Boy]

5-minute days as a supported standard option are incompatible with longer, more varied days. The two require significantly different designs and can't really coexist. Although it's easier to fudge a multi-encounter paradigm into a one-encounter paradigm than the reverse. Still a poor fit for either and with lots of distortions on the adventures you can run, but easier to do what we're doing now and let those who want a 1-encounter system adjust than vice versa. And trying to do both of them simultaneously would simply make things way more confusing--you'd need two alternate class sets, alternate encounter design guidelines, etc.

They should still consider something around that (having different guidelines) to account for the distinction between dungeon-based exploration (where the 1 encounter per day model cannot really work, story-wise) and wilderness/travel-based encounters, where 6 to 8 encounters per day again makes little to no sense (unless playing in a VERY dangerous world).

One solution to that would be to have only "per encounters" powers (instead of "daily"), but as you pointed out, that would limit the style of plays (for combat at least) to nova all the time... some people would enjoy it, I guess, but for my part, it would probably lead me to look at other systems that offer more tactical depth instead.

I'm sure the way lots of streams play the game is having a large impact on player's perception and expectations about the appropriate number of encounters per adventuring day, especially for those streams (thinking of Critical Role, here, which is a strong influence on how a large segment of the hobby envisions how the game should be played) that use physical constructions for battlemaps and things like that. Those shows rarely do more than one or two fights per session, because it doesn't make for a very entertaining experience for the viewers (especially when compared to some of the great acting moments and character development they can provide during the same amount of time spent outside combat).

I also sometimes wonder if the lack of "generic" random encounters / smaller fights battlemaps influences DM in limiting encounters (for those who don't want to use theater of the mind). I personnally enjoy preparing lots of varied battlemaps for those wilderness encounters, but it's a lot more work than just plunking the dungeon map on the table (or the screen) and knowing I have all these encounters planned for the next 10- or 20-some rooms. If large modules came with a sampling of extra battle maps to go along with those random encounter tables, maybe DMs would be more inclined to use them (and also it would make those fights more interesting; otherwise, they often devolve into blank field fights, which are rarely exciting nor super resource-depleting for a competent group of players).

[Valmark]

One more 5th level spell is meh by that definition - the Wizard isn't likely to be clamoring for one as soon as the warlock, and they sure as hell don't give a crap after they've already used AR.

Our groups probably have very different styles of playing if wizards at your table don't have a use for one more casting of their best spells for a long time then.

It's telling you which slots cannot be made: 6th and above. I agree that's its a very strange way to explain the power, especially in the context of other powers of a similar nature.


Ooops, right then. 11th it is.

[Sindeloke]

For the classes that get very little out of short rests, what sorts of things might be added to them to give more encouragement? It seems it'd be easier to add that to the four-or-so classes that don't give a crap than try to remove short-rest mechanics from the other eight-ish.

As long-rest classes (sans barb & ranger) already tend to be considered the most powerful even on a 6-8/2 schedule, just adding things seems like a non-starter. You'd need to modify some of the long rest resources, limiting them or converting them to weaker short rest versions before adding anything new.

Barbarian seems easiest. 1 rage per short rest, 2 at level 11+, no other changes. It alters their power curve a little but it shouldn't be a game-changer. Ranger can be made a half pact caster, maybe (which could potentially address some of their other issues as well).

Full casters are harder. For sorcs you could make them spell point casters using the DMG variant, but cut spell points by 60% and make them refresh on a short rest. It's a huge change but one that plays to their theme of flexibility, and is easy to explain and bookkeep. Druids, clerics, wizards? Perhaps give them one spell per level per day period, and have to make up the rest with arcane recovery (unlocked to 1/SR rather than 1/day ever)?

Paladins and bards I'm not sure where to start, but I'm also not sure how much they need it. Inspiration and Divinity are fairly strong incentives already.

[cutlery]

In my experience, the only ones pushing for 5-minute days are those who either
* don't really want to be playing D&D in the first place (ie combat is something they don't want where possible in any form)
* are still hung up on old editions and refusing to set those ways aside.

Neither one of those would be mollified by pandering to them. And by doing so you'd do tremendous violence to what a lot of people enjoy. A 1-encounter day inevitably means that
* only nova builds are viable
* combat is a solved problem--nova hard, nova fast. Rocket tag for life.
* the default will inevitably slide toward this broken style



There is little in the rules to preclude it, though, so that's on the DM.

It's a larger problem of which the "skip short rests" problem is a subset. Players know that if they take a long rest, they get a full reset, so they shoot for that whenever possible.

Yes, the DM can create tension, there are wandering monsters, etc, of course RAW an encounter that stumbles on the group while taking a long rest doesn't prevent them from getting the rest, unless they flee.

Frankly, with classes written as they are, I'd be inclined to push long rests to 3-4 days and possibly only even possible in certain areas, without spell assistance.

The DMG could stand to have more suggestions about managing rests.







Neither one of those would be mollified by pandering to them. And by doing so you'd do tremendous violence to what a lot of people enjoy. A 1-encounter day inevitably means that
* only nova builds are viable
* combat is a solved problem--nova hard, nova fast. Rocket tag for life.
* the default will inevitably slide toward this broken style


I think tables with engaging, perfectly balanced combat with deep tactical options are the exception rather than the rule. And some players really do just want to nova once and move on with other stuff. You can see the same phenomenon in lots of games; tabletop RPGs, wargames with minis, etc. I don't play at every table in the universe, but I see five minute adventuring days far more than I see long stretched out resource attrition; and given how the rules are designed around resource attrition I think it is a problem.

One, I suspect, they may "fix" in later edition.

Think about what they've done to wizards since 2e - most of the changes to the rules have been about streamlining things, and resource management (other than the SR/LR confusion) is easier in 5e than it has ever been (4e aside). If the rule of cool trumps all, after all, why not move to one combat per day?

WotC wants to sell books, I don't think they particularly care who they sell them to of what people do with them. Hopefully, they'll balance classes around that so that people that still want to play the resource attrition game can do so without only a subset of classes gaining from short rests. But I could just as easily see classes getting fewer powers and short rests being the only sorts of rests; with long rests reserved for hit dice replenishment or similar.




Noise about things does not actually translate into actual problems. Airplane crashes are stupidly rare. But when one happens, there's tons of noise and talk about it.

Would you ride in a 737 Max?

[MinotaurWarrior]

Making casters SR dependent is easy - put everyone on the warlock table. Half and one thirds casters move up it at half and 1/3 pace.

For AR, either allow wizards to get a bonus spell slot beyond their normal limits, or change it to work like flexible casting, requiring a bonus action but no long rest.

[Ignimortis]

Neither one of those would be mollified by pandering to them. And by doing so you'd do tremendous violence to what a lot of people enjoy. A 1-encounter day inevitably means that
* only nova builds are viable
* combat is a solved problem--nova hard, nova fast. Rocket tag for life.
* the default will inevitably slide toward this broken style

5-minute days as a supported standard option are incompatible with longer, more varied days. The two require significantly different designs and can't really coexist. Although it's easier to fudge a multi-encounter paradigm into a one-encounter paradigm than the reverse. Still a poor fit for either and with lots of distortions on the adventures you can run, but easier to do what we're doing now and let those who want a 1-encounter system adjust than vice versa. And trying to do both of them simultaneously would simply make things way more confusing--you'd need two alternate class sets, alternate encounter design guidelines, etc.

Just make X/encounter abilities the benchmark, and restrict X/day abilities to non-combat or hugely situational abilities. Wizard gets four 2nd level spell slots two 3rd level spell slots per encounter, and Fighter gets 10 stamina for all of their moves. When the encounter ends, they recover all of these automatically. The only thing that's NEEDED for attrition gameplay to still be a thing is HP (and healing, I suppose?), and you can easily make that the only attrition mechanic in the game. Surprisingly, HP works well enough in both a long, encounter-filled day, and single-deadly-combat games - it's still very meaningful in both.

It really fragging sucks to both conserve spell slots in a "I cast 1 spell per combat, then it's cantrip spam time" way, because we have an 8-day adventuring day, as well as "I can only do 4 cool moves per day, because we don't get to short rest enough". And 5e does both of these, and I've played at tables who had either of those problems, and sometimes both of those problems at different times.

[Asisreo1]

There is little in the rules to preclude it, though, so that's on the DM.

It's a larger problem of which the "skip short rests" problem is a subset. Players know that if they take a long rest, they get a full reset, so they shoot for that whenever possible.
A party gains nothing starting a long rest until they wait 24-hours till their next one. Assuming they walked for 8 hours, they still have 8 more hours to do other things, giving a short rest character plenty of time to short rest and involve themselves in other ways outside combat. You can't skip long rests without skipping the time involved too.







I think tables with engaging, perfectly balanced combat with deep tactical options are the exception rather than the rule. And some players really do just want to nova once and move on with other stuff. You can see the same phenomenon in lots of games; tabletop RPGs, wargames with minis, etc. I don't play at every table in the universe, but I see five minute adventuring days far more than I see long stretched out resource attrition; and given how the rules are designed around resource attrition I think it is a problem.

One, I suspect, they may "fix" in later edition.

Think about what they've done to wizards since 2e - most of the changes to the rules have been about streamlining things, and resource management (other than the SR/LR confusion) is easier in 5e than it has ever been (4e aside). If the rule of cool trumps all, after all, why not move to one combat per day?

WotC wants to sell books, I don't think they particularly care who they sell them to of what people do with them. Hopefully, they'll balance classes around that so that people that still want to play the resource attrition game can do so without only a subset of classes gaining from short rests. But I could just as easily see classes getting fewer powers and short rests being the only sorts of rests; with long rests reserved for hit dice replenishment or similar.
But why are you 100% confident that the money-making subset of groups are the ones that adamantly stay with a 5-minute adventuring day?

In fact, I think it's likely to be the ones playing official modules consistently that fall within the money-making targets. In that regard, none of these groups have ever had more than a couple of single encounter days since those hardly exist in the modules.

You don't need to have overly complex tactics for a party to be dissuaded from NOVA. In fact, most players (especially new ones) are apprehensive of using their abilities since they won't know if the next, harder encounter is just around the corner. I suspect that's even why the earlier level spellcasters get 2 high-level slots rather than one.

[KorvinStarmast]

My experience was that it was long rest character that do the most lobbying. Same as in every edition of D&D. Even when the choice is End Session and Everyone Goes Go Home and Long Rest vs Keep Playing, LR caster types will be like "oh I'm out of spells, guess I'm done, GG tonight guys!" Or just mentally check out. Seen that. And I usually remind them of "cantrips can be useful, and someone needs to hold the torch."
Making casters SR dependent is easy - put everyone on the warlock table. Half and one thirds casters move up it at half and 1/3 pace. That would surely make magic less video gamey in application.

For AR, either allow wizards to get a bonus spell slot beyond their normal limits, or change it to work like flexible casting, requiring a bonus action but no long rest. Or do it like sorcery points for spell conversion.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I'm gonna point to two things I hate about 5e.


1. The Vancian balance. It's not just that so many abilities are balanced by only being able to use them X times per day, which is annoying enough; it's that some classes have their primary abilities centered around daily (long-rest-ly) cooldowns, some have their primary abilities available all day, and some have their primary abilities centered around short rests.

If your party has a fighter, a warlock, and a cleric, how effective each will be relative to one another is strongly dependent on the relative ratios of encounters, short rests, and long rests. If you get a long rest between each encounter, the fighter will be irrelevant next to the free spell availability of the warlock and cleric, and the warlock's limited spell slots and spell choice will be overshadowed by the cleric's wider array of options and larger gas tank. But if there are instead numerous short rests, the warlock's endurance will win out over the cleric (who must ration their spells throughout the day) without affecting their strength relative to the fighter. And if there are strings of encounters without rest, the fighter will be the only one who can just keep using their abilities over and over, with the cleric and warlock spending most rounds casting cantrips and conserving resources.
(I focus on spells here because it's easier than simultaneously talking about all the resources all three classes have.)

In short, not only is balance centered around how many times you can do X in an arbitrary chunk of game time, it's deeply dependent on the way empty downtime is spaced throughout the adventure. Which brings me to my second point:


2. The designers of 5e seem reluctant to provide any guidelines. And this is a pain and a half.
I get that leaving stuff open to DMs is good. I agree! But there are ways to do that while still guiding DMs. Look at GURPS—it has reams of rules, but the books make it abundantly clear that you can use, ignore, or modify any rules if they fit your game. They serve as references to guide gameplay while still emphasizing the role of the GM.

The designers of TRPGs are, as a rule, full-time, professional game designers. They have the skills required to make an engaging game, and they have the time to do so. Most DMs/GMs are neither professionals nor full-time; they lack any formal understanding of what makes games work, and crucially, the time they have to craft their games is miniscule.* DMs need the designers to guide their own game design, because the Average Joe DM has neither the time nor expertise to do so without them. That's why they bought the books in the first place!

I'll draw a comparison to video game development, which is different from TRPG development, but TRPGs don't have the right data to make any meaningful comparison.

A typical AAA video game might give around a hundred hours of content (to pick a round number). The dev team (including artists, coders, management, etc) scales from 5-10 to 100-200 (plus QA, marketing, outside studios) (https://askagamedev.tumblr.com/post/105543803526/what-is-the-average-team-size-for-developing-a-aaa) over a development period of 2-3 years. If we assume an average team size around 75, an average work-week around 45 hours (which is probably low when you account for crunch, but that depends a lot on the studio) and that only 10% do anything with parallels in DMing, that's still over 300 designer-hours per week over 2-3 years, which totals to around 44,000 man-hours—dozens of dev-hours per hour of content. Keep in mind, this is excluding 90% of the team and making some generous assumptions about e.g. crunch—this is a very conservative estimate.
By contrast, most DMs have at best a few hours per week set aside to run weekly sessions that may run several hours. In my experience, if you exclude the time taken to draw/set up maps, I usually have less prep time per adventure than the adventure actually takes.

Of course, this isn't a fair comparison, specifically because the DM is supported by the work done by a team of professional game designers. That's why TRPG sessions aren't utter garbage. Of course the labor and skill of the DM is important, but none of it would matter if they weren't building on the framework and guidelines provided by professionals who can collectively spend tens of thousands of hours on the game and know how to spend it.

So it's something of a pet peeve of mine when devs provide systems but refuse to provide decent guidelines on how to use them in a game. It's like a game which provides a complicated set of (player-facing) mechanics and then half-asses the tutorial, except that it justifies this design choice by saying they don't want to infringe on the player's right to use those mechanics to create the play experience they want.

D&D obviously thinks that balanced encounters and proper resource management are important things a DM should consider, when you look at the advice they give on creating encounters, the adventuring day, and so on. So of course the DMG provides guidelines on how many encounters a party should face and how many long rests they need, because that's important to maintaining the "default" D&D experience!
...but the designers don't stand behind that guideline. Design your adventure day however you want, they say, without actually explaining why you would design it in any particular manner or what the effects of only having a couple encounters per day might be. Figure it out on your own! Who are we game designers with our reams of experience to tell you how our game should be played?


Contrast this with GURPS. Some supplements are better about this than others, but in general they provide explanations for why the rules are what they are. Look at the price of magic items in GURPS Magic, for instance. The book runs you through the logic of how they determine those figures, the assumptions they started from, how those interact with each other and the rules, and how to figure out different prices if you have a different set of starting assumptions. Such a minor element, explained with such clarity.
This is how you empower GMs. Don't just tell them to do whatever they want; give them guidelines, explain those guidelines, and tell them what the effects of ignoring the guidelines might be (and the times when that's a good thing).

[Tanarii]

Seen that. And I usually remind them of "cantrips can be useful, and someone needs to hold the torch."
As much as cantrips get my grognard goat, they do the job they're intended to do.

[KorvinStarmast]

As much as cantrips get my grognard goat, they do the job they're intended to do. One of the things that I lik about them is that a bunch of them are cool utility spells that come alive in the hands of imaginative players.
While I share your initial sense of them, they are fit for purpose.

[Asisreo1]

One of the things that I lik about them is that a bunch of them are cool utility spells that come alive in the hands of imaginative players.
While I share your initial sense of them, they are fit for purpose.
It's why the sorcerer doesn't bother me about spells known. Barring Lore, the Sorcerer has the exact same number of spells known as the bard up until level 10 (where they get another metamagic to compensate), it's just 2 of them are cantrips.

And cantrips are distinctly different than rituals because they have wider applications and can be used in a pinch, which I think is fair. I know others disagree but I really enjoy the sorcerer's innately more numerous cantrips compared to other spellcasters (innately).

[cutlery]

2. The designers of 5e seem reluctant to provide any guidelines. And this is a pain and a half.

Yep. This makes the problem worse than it needs to be.

And it would have been so easy to fix.

[Edea]

Hmm...

Barbarian: Rage number follows warlock spell slot progression, but they come back after short resting?

Ranger: Change Hunter's Mark to a class feature from 1st level (get rid of the spell), that's usable a certain number of times in between short rests (maybe once at first, and that improves as you gain ranger levels)?

Rogue: This one's fairly simple: Trick Attack. You just flat-out make an attack with a finesse or ranged weapon with advantage, no conditions, and you get to use it once per short rest (any more than once sounds over-the-top).

Sorcerer: Change Metamagic options to just be usable a certain number of times in between short rests, maybe offer the ability to use them more often than that with sorcery points but then up those costs slightly to reflect the short rest-recharge ability.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I've even heard of groups that never take a short rest. Or: always take a long rest.
Even in groups that know better, it can take some lobbying for the player of a mostly short-rest character to talk them into taking a short rest.
Can confirm; our players know that short rests are important, but we rarely find ourselves in situations where it makes sense to sit around for an hour and we aren't calling it for the adventuring day.



That would mean redesigning the entire system from the ground up. CR, all abilities, HP, HD, etc. That's not a fix, that's a new edition.
Yes. And?
I don't think any of us are petitioning WotC about this problem.


And I disagree that "one encounter days" are the default. The published adventures I've read don't do that at all (unless you manage to pull a whole day's worth of encounters into one like I did once...oops). Nothing in the system tells you that that's an option.
And yet, it's still a pretty regular occurrence. More so at some tables than others, but whether because your players are deliberately cheesing long rests or because your adventure just doesn't make sense compressed down into 1-2 days, it happens. I've had adventures and even one campaign where more encounters than not were the only encounter we faced that day. (It's especially likely in adventures focused on travel.)

Some plots work very well on a schedule of several significant fights per day. Some don't work at all. None work if your players don't cooperate.



I don't support making wholesale changes to appease people who refuse to read the books. Because that's what is required to pull the 5-minute-working-day and suggest that it's anywhere near a supported option.
As a member of one of the groups you're accusing of not reading the books, I'm deeply insulted. We do read the books, in fact; that's not the problem. The problem is, depending on your perspective, either that the book doesn't provide guidelines for putting together multi-encounter days outside dungeon contexts or that no such guidelines are possible.




Famously, on an open field the Terrasque (CR 30) can be easily defeated by a single level 1 pc on a mount with a ranged weapon, such as a halfling ranger, because it lacks ranged attacks and has the same movement as a mastiff.
That doesn't sound right...
checks 5e tarrasque statistics
Well, it's immune to nonmagical physical damage, so it would need to be a halfling warlock or something. But beyond that...no regeneration, no Rush, nothing. You'd want something faster than a mastiff if it remembered to use its Legendary Actions (if it gets all three in a round, its total non-Dash movement is an even hundred feet, but even with only one per round [as it would get with a single PC] you'd want something more like a riding horse than a mastiff).



For the classes that get very little out of short rests, what sorts of things might be added to them to give more encouragement? It seems it'd be easier to add that to the four-or-so classes that don't give a crap than try to remove short-rest mechanics from the other eight-ish.
There's not really a simple solution, aside from restoring some of their long-rest abilities on short rests or making some of their unlimited abilities limited on a short-rest basis. I'm not sure which of those solutions is worse.
Solving the problem requires a fundamental redesign of D&D resource balance. All classes need some relevant short-rest abilities and some relevant long-rest abilities (and relevant at-will abilities, but they're doing pretty good there now that cantrips are a thing).



One solution to that would be to have only "per encounters" powers (instead of "daily"), but as you pointed out, that would limit the style of plays (for combat at least) to nova all the time... some people would enjoy it, I guess, but for my part, it would probably lead me to look at other systems that offer more tactical depth instead.
Assuming, of course, that the per-encounter powers were comparable to 5e's long-rest powers and high-level spells.

[Deathtongue]

I don't support making wholesale changes to appease people who refuse to read the books. Because that's what is required to pull the 5-minute-working-day and suggest that it's anywhere near a supported option. Just like the appropriate support response to someone hammering in nails with their iPhone is "sorry, not a supported use", people have to be responsible for their own breakage when they use things way outside of specs.

Here's my problem with that logic: single-encounter workdays where heroes go from encounter-to-encounter fully topped out on their signature abilities are the default in action-adventure fiction. Dungeon Masters who use action-adventure fiction, especially fantasy action-adventure fiction like Harry Potter and Avatar: The Last Airbender and Naruto, to construct their campaigns are going to design their setpieces around a 0-2 encounter workday, because that's what action-adventure fastasy uses to tell their stories.

To that end, the books are wrong. The game developers are wrong. The assumptions the game developers used to write the books are wrong. Their wrongness comes from assuming that people and dungeon masters care more about the gameplay than the story and that people will bend the story to fit the needs of gameplay. Most DMs don't do this, and if they do, it has a high chance of coming across as phony and 4th-wall breaking. 'Uhhh, ninjas attack you in the night 1 hour into your rest after the big We Beat the Evil Emperor celebration'.

D&D's encounter construction of 4-6 encounters is the deviant paradigm. It isn't a complete mockery of how stories are constructed in fiction, since there are occasions where the heroes are ground down by a gauntlet of battles and then find themselves running on fumes for the Final Battle -- but they're just that, occasions. The hero(es) fight the BBEG and their lieutenants at nearly full strength in the big final encounter.

[cutlery]

D&D's encounter construction of 4-6 encounters is the deviant paradigm.

It makes sense for sorties into hostile territory, like an honest to Hadar dungeon. But, not all games revolve around those, nor do they necessarily work like a living breathing hero eating machine when they do.

Plus, with the plethora of stuff like Rope Trick, Tiny Hut, etc - rests are easy to take. Tiny hut can be had at level 5; at that point you need plot contrivances to keep the pressure on, not the living, breathing, adventurer-eating machine dungeon.

[diplomancer]

The SR/LR balance could be easily fixed by letting SR powers recharge in 10 minutes, limited to 2 or 3 times per day (say, after every 2 Encounters/Fights). If recovering Hit Points that fast bothers a player (probably a grognard like me), say HP recovery needs a full hour, call it a Medium Rest.

[Deathtongue]

They should still consider something around that (having different guidelines) to account for the distinction between dungeon-based exploration (where the 1 encounter per day model cannot really work, story-wise) and wilderness/travel-based encounters, where 6 to 8 encounters per day again makes little to no sense (unless playing in a VERY dangerous world).


I also sometimes wonder if the lack of "generic" random encounters / smaller fights battlemaps influences DM in limiting encounters (for those who don't want to use theater of the mind). I personnally enjoy preparing lots of varied battlemaps for those wilderness encounters, but it's a lot more work than just plunking the dungeon map on the table (or the screen) and knowing I have all these encounters planned for the next 10- or 20-some rooms. If large modules came with a sampling of extra battle maps to go along with those random encounter tables, maybe DMs would be more inclined to use them (and also it would make those fights more interesting; otherwise, they often devolve into blank field fights, which are rarely exciting nor super resource-depleting for a competent group of players).

Let's be real here: if you give even most novice DM a choice between advancing the plot without running an encounter or running an encounter without advancing the plot, they're going to choose the former. Obviously, the ideal would be to do both, but that's just not possible a lot of the time and even if you do give story-based reasons for extra encounters (while we're storming the castle to take out the BBEG, let's go down to the dungeon and free the prisoners! Then let's go to the castle's altar and desecrate the shrine to get revenge on the traitorous Bishop and curse the castle!) there's an increasing risk of killing the tension or derailing the plot.

All things being equal, having more encounters in a workday makes storytelling harder. You need to come up with reasons why people should be invested in this fight beyond 'we can't advance the plot without beating it', you need to worry more about pacing so that the actual story-vital final encounter doesn't come across as an anti-climax, and of course you have to worry about what's going to happen if the players roll badly on what was supposed to be a filler encounter and decide to Peace Out.

[Deathtongue]

It makes sense for sorties into hostile territory, like an honest to Hadar dungeon. But, not all games revolve around those, nor do they necessarily work like a living breathing hero eating machine when they do.Nor should the game revolve around them. There's a reason why action-adventure stories that aren't also games don't really do D&D-style dungeon crawls -- from a narrative perspective, they're inherently boring. The average encounters by and large don't advance the plot, don't contribute to the climax, don't fit into storytelling themes more complex than 'war is hell', and worst of all they often serve as obstacles to things that people actually care about in the plot. The DM can of course make filler dungeon crawl encounters relevant to the story (this random group of gnolls was fired by the BBEG for eating a prisoner, they're debating selling you their secrets or attacking you to get re-hired again, etc.), but it's difficult to do it consistently. Especially if we're talking about the 4-6 encounters/day setup.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Nor should the game revolve around them. There's a reason why action-adventure stories that aren't also games don't really do D&D-style dungeon crawls -- from a narrative perspective, they're inherently boring. The average encounters by and large don't advance the plot, don't contribute to the climax, don't fit into storytelling themes more complex than 'war is hell', and worst of all they often serve as obstacles to things that people actually care about in the plot. The DM can of course make filler dungeon crawl encounters relevant to the story (this random group of gnolls was fired by the BBEG for eating a prisoner, they're debating selling you their secrets or attacking you to get re-hired again, etc.), but it's difficult to do it consistently. Especially if we're talking about the 4-6 encounters/day setup.

I rarely run dungeon crawls. Yet my actual adventuring days rarely only have a single encounter. Because that makes no sense in 90% of cases I've come across. Infiltrating somewhere? You don't have time to take a long rest. Traveling rarely is an adventuring day, so it averages 0 encounters. Etc.

One super huge encounter only makes sense in a few, specific cases. And I've taught lots of DMs. None of them have defaulted to that--in fact they've usually gone the other way.

Oh, and setups that work in other media don't necessarily work in games. You can't just import the tropes directly. Doing so it's a recipe for narrative disaster.

[Frogreaver]

I rarely run dungeon crawls. Yet my actual adventuring days rarely only have a single encounter. Because that makes no sense in 90% of cases I've come across. Infiltrating somewhere? You don't have time to take a long rest. Traveling rarely is an adventuring day, so it averages 0 encounters. Etc.

One super huge encounter only makes sense in a few, specific cases. And I've taught lots of DMs. None of them have defaulted to that--in fact they've usually gone the other way.

Oh, and setups that work in other media don't necessarily work in games. You can't just import the tropes directly. Doing so it's a recipe for narrative disaster.

I mean it's easy to run however many encounters you want when your players are always willing to push on. It's basically impossible to do so when they aren't. Maybe it's not so much "good DMing" as "good players" that's the reason some DM's have such major problems in this area and some do not.

...And don't get me started about techniques to make the encounters come to the players. Doing so only makes such players even more likely to not want to push forward as what you've actually done is set the expectation that they need to fallback while still retaining even more resources lest future encounters also come to them again.

[cutlery]

I mean it's easy to run however many encounters you want when your players are always willing to push on. It's basically impossible to do so when they aren't. Maybe it's not so much "good DMing" as "good players" that's the reason some DM's have such major problems in this area and some do not.

That, and once they've sussed out that taking a long rest is good for them and there don't appear to be any immediate plot-crushing reasons not to - why not use a hut/mansion, leave, set up camp, whatever? The game makes it very easy to do.

[Deathtongue]

I rarely run dungeon crawls. Yet my actual adventuring days rarely only have a single encounter. Because that makes no sense in 90% of cases I've come across.I do not understand this statement. Single-encounters are the default in action-adventure fiction, especially fantasy action-adventure fiction. Occasions for multiple-encounter workdays tend to be the climax of the story and even then they tend to be fewer than the assumed default of 5E D&D.

Let's take a workday in a fantasy movie/novel/live-action TV show/anime of 'blowing past the castle walls and gates' -> confronting the BBEG's lieutenants and honor guard outside the throne room -> fight the actual BBEG and the demon they summoned is considered strenuous.

That's only three encounters right now. What should a DM be adding to that to get it up to six? I heard that people should be using resource-draining non-combat encounters -- okay, what should they be adding to that. More importantly, why? It's not all that difficult for a DM to inflate that number by declaring that you're fighting mercenaries the BBEG hired in the courtyard or that the mad scientist has a special surprise they've been working on or that one of the armies turn traitor mid-battle or whatever -- but again, why? What exactly does that add to the story that the original three-encounter setup didn't?


Oh, and setups that work in other media don't necessarily work in games. You can't just import the tropes directly. Doing so it's a recipe for narrative disaster.Other tabletop RPGs, such as FFG's Star Wars and Champions, doesn't have this problem of the mechanics running counter to media genre. So what makes D&D so special that it gets to ignore genre tropes?

[Frogreaver]

That, and once they've sussed out that taking a long rest is good for them and there don't appear to be any immediate plot-crushing reasons not to - why not use a hut/mansion, leave, set up camp, whatever? The game makes it very easy to do.

Because then they would cease to be "good players" :smalltongue:


I do not understand this statement. Single-encounters are the default in action-adventure fiction, especially fantasy action-adventure fiction. Occasions for multiple-encounter workdays tend to be the climax of the story and even then they tend to be fewer than the assumed default of 5E D&D.

Let's take a workday in a fantasy movie/novel/live-action TV show/anime of 'blowing past the castle walls and gates' -> confronting the BBEG's lieutenants and honor guard outside the throne room -> fight the actual BBEG and the demon they summoned is considered strenuous.

That's only three encounters right now. What should a DM be adding to that to get it up to six? I heard that people should be using resource-draining non-combat encounters -- okay, what should they be adding to that. More importantly, why? It's not all that difficult for a DM to inflate that number by declaring that you're fighting mercenaries the BBEG hired in the courtyard or that the mad scientist has a special surprise they've been working on or that one of the armies turn traitor mid-battle or whatever -- but again, why? What exactly does that add to the story that the original three-encounter setup didn't?

Other tabletop RPGs, such as FFG's Star Wars and Champions, doesn't have this problem of the mechanics running counter to media genre. So what makes D&D so special that it gets to ignore genre tropes?

The bigger issue in that example is when they heck would they be taking an hour long short rest - let alone 2?

[Deathtongue]

The bigger issue in that example is when they heck would they be taking an hour long short rest - let alone 2?5E D&D certainly makes it worse than 3E/4E D&D by making short rests actively disruptive to the pacing, but 5E D&D's basic encounter construction is already narratively disruptive.

[Frogreaver]

5E D&D certainly makes it worse than 3E/4E D&D by making short rests actively disruptive to the pacing, but 5E D&D's basic encounter construction is already narratively disruptive.

encounter short rest encounter short rest encounter long rest

isn't a heck of a lot different than

encounter encounter short rest encounter encounter short rest encounter encounter long rest.

Maybe that is our disconnect.

[KorvinStarmast]

5E D&D certainly makes it worse than 3E/4E D&D by making short rests actively disruptive to the pacing, but 5E D&D's basic encounter construction is already narratively disruptive.
I have found that if I backwards plan 3 hard to deadly for an adventure day using the daily XP budget, and always have a medium to hard for a random encounter in my hip pocket, I can use them or not as the play progresses. My players sometimes avoid encounters turning to combat by their use of parley negotiation and spells. I consider that success, and award XP on a scale of 0.5 to 1.0 depending on the nature of the transaction. When we have an overarching narrative.

If we get dungeon crawly, you can expect one battle to attract the attention of other creatures ... that level of verisimilitude sits well with my players. They also know that sometimes, you get the heck out if the encounter looks to be overwhelming. We learned the "live to fight another day" back when we started.

I realize that not every table has our tastes.

[SiCK_Boy]

Assuming, of course, that the per-encounter powers were comparable to 5e's long-rest powers and high-level spells.

Even if they were not, unless said encounter powers were much less powerful than basic attacks / cantrips, they would still be used for maximum efficiency in every encounter. We already see this with just the bonus action, and how many players try to always have something to do with a bonus action every turn so as not to "waste" it; the same would happen if you knew you had use of, say, 3 powers / encounter. In fact, the main consequence if those powers were too weak would be to slow down combat (which currently rarely lasts more than 3 to 5 rounds); again, this would be taking us back to a more 4th edition style of play, and I don't think that's the direction the game should be going.


Here's my problem with that logic: single-encounter workdays where heroes go from encounter-to-encounter fully topped out on their signature abilities are the default in action-adventure fiction. Dungeon Masters who use action-adventure fiction, especially fantasy action-adventure fiction like Harry Potter and Avatar: The Last Airbender and Naruto, to construct their campaigns are going to design their setpieces around a 0-2 encounter workday, because that's what action-adventure fastasy uses to tell their stories.

To that end, the books are wrong. The game developers are wrong. The assumptions the game developers used to write the books are wrong. Their wrongness comes from assuming that people and dungeon masters care more about the gameplay than the story and that people will bend the story to fit the needs of gameplay. Most DMs don't do this, and if they do, it has a high chance of coming across as phony and 4th-wall breaking. 'Uhhh, ninjas attack you in the night 1 hour into your rest after the big We Beat the Evil Emperor celebration'.

D&D's encounter construction of 4-6 encounters is the deviant paradigm. It isn't a complete mockery of how stories are constructed in fiction, since there are occasions where the heroes are ground down by a gauntlet of battles and then find themselves running on fumes for the Final Battle -- but they're just that, occasions. The hero(es) fight the BBEG and their lieutenants at nearly full strength in the big final encounter.

That's a very interesting take on things. I never really looked at it from this angle, probably because I don't try to replicate stories in my games; the game is a game (and the combat sub-game is a tactical combat game, as far as I'm concerned); the story is just something that emerges afterward once the session is over and you think back over it.

I guess the question that remains is then, why are so many DMs (often relatively inexperienced with the system) making complaints about how their players just crush every encounter and how they aren't getting challenged enough? If those DMs are looking to just recreate games based on action-adventure fiction, we should just tell them to double the XP budget for their one-per-day encounter (with the TPK risk that comes with it), rather than remind them how the rules are designed to support an attrition-based 6-to-8 encounters adventuring day?

And obviously, the people looking for these style of games clearly have little to no notion of what the "dungeons" parts of the D&D name mean, because there are clearly no dungeon-delve designed like those action-adventures stories. Yet it's in dungeon-delve that you normally get the closest thing to a full (or a sequence of full) adventuring day in the most "natural" fashion.


Let's be real here: if you give even most novice DM a choice between advancing the plot without running an encounter or running an encounter without advancing the plot, they're going to choose the former. Obviously, the ideal would be to do both, but that's just not possible a lot of the time and even if you do give story-based reasons for extra encounters (while we're storming the castle to take out the BBEG, let's go down to the dungeon and free the prisoners! Then let's go to the castle's altar and desecrate the shrine to get revenge on the traitorous Bishop and curse the castle!) there's an increasing risk of killing the tension or derailing the plot.

All things being equal, having more encounters in a workday makes storytelling harder. You need to come up with reasons why people should be invested in this fight beyond 'we can't advance the plot without beating it', you need to worry more about pacing so that the actual story-vital final encounter doesn't come across as an anti-climax, and of course you have to worry about what's going to happen if the players roll badly on what was supposed to be a filler encounter and decide to Peace Out.

I have to disagree with this, but it's probably just my personal playstyle preference. I enjoy encounters (combat or otherwise) for their own sake; each encounter I play in (or put in front of my players when I DM) serves a purpose, even those random encounters (sometimes the purpose is as minimal as worldbuilding, and often, that purpose is not directly tied to the main storyline / quest / mission being played, but it still something I do deliberatly, with intent, and upon which consequences hang). Again, I think it goes down to this desire to "tell a story" (or "advance the storyline", as you mention); I enjoy it when my character or our party makes progress against our declared objectives and goals, but the primary drive is not so much to "tell the story" (which to me also comes with the implied "...and then be done with it"), but just the simple curiosity of seeing "what next".


Other tabletop RPGs, such as FFG's Star Wars and Champions, doesn't have this problem of the mechanics running counter to media genre. So what makes D&D so special that it gets to ignore genre tropes?

Maybe the fact that D&D actually invented the genre in a lot of cases. But more seriously, maybe it's also the fact that D&D, as a game, was not created as a "storytelling" game first; other RPG gave this aspect of the game much more consideration when they were designed, and it may be easier for them to support that style of play. D&D relied on a lot of fantasy tropes upon creation, but I think a lot of it had to do with character themselves (and their abilities), rather than about the stories being told. I don't think there were that many crazy wizards creating infinite mazes full of monsters in those classical stories that inspired the game creators, yet the game during its first few years was primarily played in such a setting and context. And although D&D did evolve quite a bit since the days of OD&D, it still sticks close to its roots in a lot of ways, even today, including in the kind of stories it is best equipped to tell.


encounter short rest encounter short rest encounter long rest

isn't a heck of a lot different than

encounter encounter short rest encounter encounter short rest encounter encounter long rest.

Maybe that is our disconnect.

Quite the contrary. Those extra encounters you add, although they take only a couple more words in your sentence, will make all the difference to the players as far as using up their resources. Without them, unless you significantly jack up the difficulty of the single encounters (which, again, comes with higher risks of TPK and more variance), the players will rarely ever be challened enough to make the encounters a credible threat. On the other hand, those extra encounters do end up taking a lot more time at the table than even the time it took me to type it up; as others have indicated, not all tables are inclined to spend that time on "less important" (story-wise) encounters.

[Deathtongue]

That's a very interesting take on things. I never really looked at it from this angle, probably because I don't try to replicate stories in my games; the game is a game (and the combat sub-game is a tactical combat game, as far as I'm concerned); the story is just something that emerges afterward once the session is over and you think back over it.

No offense, but I don't believe people who say that they don't replicate popular stories and tropes in their head when they're designing games. Because their plots and homebrew and worldbuilding and pacing are too similar to genre tropes to be considered independent of them. How often have DMs ran plots where the party broke out of the prison cells and defeated the BBEG chatting with the jailer -- thus saving the kingdom -- in encounter 1 and the rest of the workday is chasing down bandits and remnants? What about encounters where you teleport-ambush the crime lord and spend the rest of the day helping out the local vigilantes take care of the thieves' guild? How about encounters where you meet the evil vizier right when you enter the city gates, kill him after he makes unreasonable demands, and then learn more about the city and why it was a good thing you killed him before you move onto the next plot? Probably close to never, even though the rules of D&D says those are a valid way to balance encounters and design adventures.

Most people don't actively set out to replicate the plot of Harry Potter or Star Wars or whatever, sure. But they still largely follow the structure of those plots. Which is: discover details about the setting/oncoming plot so people are emotionally invested, learn about a problem that they can make an impact on, get thrown an obstacle while trying to fix it that represents and raises the stakes, formulate a plan to finish the problem once and for all, execute the plan while dealing with obstacles that come along the way, climax, problem's solved, celebrate. What's curious is how this basic plot structure biases encounter design towards a number of encounters in a workday -- a workday that 5E D&D then turns around and says is too short, you should be adding more filler. And 5E D&D doesn't give any guidance about how to reconcile the dissonance between the natural structure of plots and the expected workday.

[Deathtongue]

Quite the contrary. Those extra encounters you add, although they take only a couple more words in your sentence, will make all the difference to the players as far as using up their resources. Without them, unless you significantly jack up the difficulty of the single encounters (which, again, comes with higher risks of TPK and more variance), the players will rarely ever be challened enough to make the encounters a credible threat. On the other hand, those extra encounters do end up taking a lot more time at the table than even the time it took me to type it up; as others have indicated, not all tables are inclined to spend that time on "less important" (story-wise) encounters.If you don't care about whether a particular encounter advances the plot, why care about how the workday is designed at all? It sounds like you like the gameplay effect of having fewer resources for The Big Fight even at the expense of story. But why do you need to have more encounters in order for players to have fewer resources for The Big Fight? If you don't care WHY the wizard is facing off the dragon at the end of the dungeon with only half of their available spells, just that they aren't operating at full power, I can think of mechanics to make that happen without forcing a certain workday structure.

I claim it's quite possible to have game mechanics where the spellcasters aren't topped off on their best spell slots for every encounter/the monk has all of their ki points/the barbarian has all of (or any) rages and full points without forcing them to spend it on 'filler' encounters. If what you want is attrition, there's ways to do that without hurting the metanarrative.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Here's my problem with that logic: single-encounter workdays where heroes go from encounter-to-encounter fully topped out on their signature abilities are the default in action-adventure fiction.
I'd like to bring up one exception to the rule: It's common for characters to only use their most powerful abilities once (or sometimes a few times) in a fight. Naturally, this is related to the narrative purpose of those abilities more than it's justified by any in-universe logic; they're usually either finishing moves used to end a tough fight or a way to measure the threat of a new villain by how little the old


D&D's encounter construction of 4-6 encounters is the deviant paradigm. It isn't a complete mockery of how stories are constructed in fiction, since there are occasions where the heroes are ground down by a gauntlet of battles and then find themselves running on fumes for the Final Battle -- but they're just that, occasions. The hero(es) fight the BBEG and their lieutenants at nearly full strength in the big final encounter.
I'd like to point out that D&D's paradigm isn't really a deviation from adventure fiction, so much as bringing actual stories in is a deviation from D&D's paradigm.


Back in the olden times, when all but the crankiest of grognards were still too young for Snakes & Ladders*, there was a wargame known as Chainmail, developed by mysterious figures known only as Jeff Perren and Gary Gygax (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0536.html). Another figure, Dave Arneson (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0644.html)—you know what, let's get past the early history. Another Dave's wargame and Chainmail, individual combat, improvisational theater, role-playing, AD&D.

At this point, the legends say D&D was more akin to the wargames that it spawned from than the free-form VRPGs† it would inspire, except asymmetrical. One group of players controlled a single unit each, while the other controlled the entire opposing army and made the map. The environment chosen for most of these battlefields was a broad class of underground complex known as the "dungeon". The reasons for this are unknown; perhaps the stony walls and dark interiors of these places spoke to an atmospheric or tonal desire, perhaps it was an efficient method of directing player movement through a space, perhaps it was just an excuse for Gygax to fill the entire space with the kinds of player-killing traps that would shock Kaizo Mario World. Regardless, this set a standard for play, which has haunted the game as it developed through the ages.

As the game grew it was refined, and as it was refined it grew further, influencing and being influenced by the media landscape it was increasingly part of. The role-playing aspects became more pronounced, to the point of naming the genre D&D spawned, yet the dungeon remained. D&D was such a profound force that it would go on to shape entire genres; western VRPG (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WesternRPG) developers took the elements of player freedom, while their Japanese (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Roleplay/RecordOfLodossWar) counterparts (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EasternRPG) focused more on creating deep storylines for a player to involve themselves in, and fantasy authors across the world added Gygax to the breadth of previous authors whose works they drew on for inspiration.‡

And as D&D inspired, so it was inspired. A greater focus on player choice and deep storytelling was added to the game, trying to emphasize the things TRPGs are strong at relative to VRPGs (and avoid being left behind by the other TRPGs built around such strengths). Yet they could not change too much, for now the grognards were old and powerful. If too much changed, they may declare it no longer D&D and tarnish the new game, which would risk its sales among grognards and those foolish enough to listen to them.
So they kept as much of the husk of D&D as they could while improving the core. The Vancian spellcasting, now associated first and foremost with D&D itself rather than the author it was named after, would remain despite a bold attempt at reducing its power; thus, the mechanical rhythms of the game would be intrinsically tied to the rise and fall of the sun and moon. With this they kept the dungeon, the one environment where narrative and mechanical pacing could be maintained to some degree by the author—for the humble Dungeon Master had long since transcended from a mere opposing player to an authorial role.

Thus the dungeon remains, and thus the dungeon will remain, until the Adventuring Day and its fell master, Vancian Magic, are slain.


*And the 3.5 grognards like me weren't even born!
†Yes, this example was chosen to irritate a certain type of TRPG fan. And the adjective was chosen so they couldn't point to the most linear examples of the VRPG genres and would need to admit that, yes, some video games do provide decently open stories. Mwa ha ha.
‡This doesn't fit in anywhere, but I've heard a historian attribute a modern myth about medieval culture—specifically, that medieval clerics didn't use bladed weapons because they'd draw blood—to D&D. I dunno if it has earlier origins, but the fact that someone who knows his stuff thinks it might have is interesting.

TL;DR: Dungeons and the Adventuring Day go hand in hand.
The adventuring day only works in dungeons, but most adventures were some variant of a dungeon crawl in the game's formative years, and even today adventures usually center around one or a few complexes (sometimes underground, sometimes not) containing at least an adventuring day's worth of encounters.
If you try to set adventures anywhere else, it's practically impossible to have several encounters in a single day without feeling artificial.



I do not understand this statement. Single-encounters are the default in action-adventure fiction, especially fantasy action-adventure fiction. Occasions for multiple-encounter workdays tend to be the climax of the story and even then they tend to be fewer than the assumed default of 5E D&D.
And the exceptions to this rule tend to feel way longer than they are, because we grasp on a fundamental level that that many distinct fights in such a short time period is simply abnormal. (The only examples I can think of off the top of my head are criticized for pacing, explicitly-artificial tournament arcs, or both.)



encounter short rest encounter short rest encounter long rest

isn't a heck of a lot different than

encounter encounter short rest encounter encounter short rest encounter encounter long rest.

Maybe that is our disconnect.
There's a big difference between
encounter 5-minute rest encounter 5-minute rest encounter overnight rest
and
encounter encounter hour-long rest encounter encounter hour-long rest encounter overnight rest

Maybe not at the table, but some groups care about the distinction between "our heroes take a quick breather before moving on" and "our heroes play a quick game of Catan before moving on".



Even if they were not, unless said encounter powers were much less powerful than basic attacks / cantrips, they would still be used for maximum efficiency in every encounter.
Yes. The same can be said of daily spells.
The thing about powers that are limited per encounter, is that you need to limit your use of them within the encounter. Because you can't use them that much.


And obviously, the people looking for these style of games clearly have little to no notion of what the "dungeons" parts of the D&D name mean, because there are clearly no dungeon-delve designed like those action-adventures stories.
And while we're mocking other people for not following the name of the game to a T, how about those people who include non-dragon monsters in their games?
This is such a dumb argument. Dungeons & Dragons includes more than just dungeons and dragons.



No offense, but I don't believe people who say that they don't replicate popular stories and tropes in their head when they're designing games. Because their plots and homebrew and worldbuilding and pacing are too similar to genre tropes to be considered independent of them.
Frick, even the most boring megadungeon is drawing on outside influences! As much as the dungeon crawl has defined D&D, it's not unique to the game, not in whole and certainly not in part. Look at the Dungeon Crawling TV Tropes page (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DungeonCrawling)!



If you don't care about whether a particular encounter advances the plot, why care about how the workday is designed at all? It sounds like you like the gameplay effect of having fewer resources for The Big Fight even at the expense of story. But why do you need to have more encounters in order for players to have fewer resources for The Big Fight? If you don't care WHY the wizard is facing off the dragon at the end of the dungeon with only half of their available spells, just that they aren't operating at full power, I can think of mechanics to make that happen without forcing a certain workday structure.

I claim it's quite possible to have game mechanics where the spellcasters aren't topped off on their best spell slots for every encounter/the monk has all of their ki points/the barbarian has all of (or any) rages and full points without forcing them to spend it on 'filler' encounters. If what you want is attrition, there's ways to do that without hurting the metanarrative.
It's possible, but there aren't any mechanics like it in the book, so it feels cheap. (It also denies the players the ability to influence how much and which of their resources are depleted—e.g. good tactical planning that lets them wipe out the goblins with two spells instead of seven, or deciding whether to spend a couple spell slots on healing or just accept the HP damage).
It's far easier to accept "Let's fight several narratively irrelevant battles" than "I'll just chop off half your resources before we start the final battle". There's a bit of narrative reason for this—the battles against minions help tension raise gradually rather than just go from zero to FINAL BOSS BATTLE RAAGH—but most of it is simply down to the "social contract" of the D&D table. Anything in the D&D rules is fine; anything outside may not be.


Incidentally, my golden solution would be some kind of sequential boss (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SequentialBoss)—perhaps not as mechanically distinct as separate video game bosses, but distinct nonetheless. Then you can have multiple distinct "encounters" in a way that makes narrative sense, instead of multiple encounters which need their own narrative explanation or one extra-hard, extra-long encounter.*
Effing shame that WotC doesn't have any support for this kind of encounter design!

Not that these are ALWAYS bad; I remember one time while playing Storm King's Thunder when a random encounter sent us careening towards Chief Guh's fortress levels below when the party was supposed to. We wound up fighting everyone in the throne room at once, and more reinforcements (the same kinds of giants and giantkin as in the throne room) kept trickling in. It was massive, it was way above our power level, and we won with one character death (and almost everyone else being knocked unconscious at some point)...but it was goshdang memorable.

But I wouldn't want every boss fight to be like that. It was so great because it was so rare. If it was common, it would feel like a slog instead of a uniquely epic battle.

[Deathtongue]

It's far easier to accept "Let's fight several narratively irrelevant battles" than "I'll just chop off half your resources before we start the final battle". There's a bit of narrative reason for this—the battles against minions help tension raise gradually rather than just go from zero to FINAL BOSS BATTLE RAAGH—but most of it is simply down to the "social contract" of the D&D table. Anything in the D&D rules is fine; anything outside may not be.This is a big reason, in my opinion, as to why D&D has become irrelevant to pop culture at large despite being the backbone of the fantasy genre in the 70s and 80s. D&D is at an uncomfortable stage where it's dependent on a core of fans who feel alienated by any major change but eschewing these major changes keep forcing it into making design decisions that prevent it from being anything but a dinosaur legacy property reclaiming its old popularity. And given what happened with 4E D&D, we can expect this to continue.

I don't really see a way out of it, other than for some far-thinking game company to start fresh with a new D&D-killer and accept short-term losses. Then D&D reacts to the D&D-killer, if it's still alive, to fix its problems.

*Though I think that 4th edition had a lot more problems than 'it's new and sacred-cow murdering', starting with how the game didn't ever have an idea of what type of stories you were supposed to tell with the engine even as they fixed a lot of the balance problems.

[Asisreo1]

This thread seems to be touching exactly what I mean in the OP.

Everyone seems to be at each other's throat about what an adventuring day is supposed to be. "Short rests take too long" "6 encounters are too much" "1 encounter days are too common."

The point is: none of these should be stressed over.

The design isn't that 2 short rests needs to be squeezed into play. It's letting you know that typically, a party will want this short rest or else they may face a TPK. If they end up not needing the rest, great! They've paced themselves well or were lucky enough not to need them. However, a DM should be advised to actually let the party short rest even in their hostile area if they need it.

If you want to play with 1 encounter, do so. You still need to be aware of your player's capabilities, though. I agree that a Purple Worm on a 5th-level party may be too much, but introducing a BBEG like a Beholder outside its lair or a Gynosphinx may be gentle enough that it isn't hardcore, but rough enough that all hands must be on-deck to succeed. NOVA would have its place, it wouldn't be overwhelming, but the slower burn characters can still contribute meaningfully.

Players can attempt a long rest whenever but they don't get the benefit until 24-hours from their last one. That gives non-long rest characters plenty of time to short rest and use their abilities in other ways.

[Deathtongue]

However, a DM should be advised to actually let the party short rest even in their hostile area if they need it.I've played in plenty of encounters where monsters start doing suboptimal things mid-encounter because it was too lethal/difficult for the party to handle, and trust me, everyone sees through it and it leaves the table with a bad feeling. Just yesterday I was in an encounter with a Hill Giant and a Mammoth against an unoptimized 3rd-level party with 6 people and after two party members got creamed they spent actions 'rearing on their back legs of the Mammoth and trumpeting, make a DC 10 WIS saving throw or be frightened for one round'.

So let's not. Breaking the 4th wall like this is bad DMing, and if the game encourages DMs to break the 4th wall in order to maintain game balance it it's bad game design.

[Asisreo1]

I've played in plenty of encounters where monsters start doing suboptimal things mid-encounter because it was too lethal/difficult for the party to handle, and trust me, everyone sees through it and it leaves the table with a bad feeling. Just yesterday I was in an encounter with a Hill Giant and a Mammoth against an unoptimized 3rd-level party with 6 people and after two party members got creamed they spent actions 'rearing on their back legs of the Mammoth and trumpeting, make a DC 10 WIS saving throw or be frightened for one round'.

So let's not. Breaking the 4th wall like this is bad DMing, and if the game encourages DMs to break the 4th wall in order to maintain game balance it it's bad game design.
They really shouldn't know that anything has changed behind the screen. They have no idea where the encounters are positioned or when the monsters are likely to show up. Even in hostile territory, it's possible that the enemy simply don't know your exact position. I can easily imagine that it could take quite a while to discover evidence that the party is inside the lair, relay this with the lair boss, then organize a search party to find the group. That's if the lair is well-organized.

In a lair where its something like undead roaming around, it's just possible that an undead monster never tried walking into the area that the party has stationed for the past hour. In such a case, they're pretty lucky.

Random Encounters in adventure modules even have a way to prevent too many encounters of random variety constantly annoying the party. Usually its something like "If they've encountered 2 random encounters over the course of the day, stop rolling for encounters." Many monsters in these lair also may or may not even move around at all. Alot of adventures don't have reinforcement or moving monsters unless they say so under a subsection called "Development."

Either way, It's relatively simple not cluing your player into you allowing short rests by easing up encounters or not. Remember, they can't read your mind or your notes. You really don't have to explain anything to them, merely letting them rest. When the next encounter happens, you can have the enemy say "We found the invaders!" and that should be enough for the players to understand that the enemies weren't just having their hands in their pants the entire time.

[cutlery]

The point is: none of these should be stressed over.


If classes didn't vary widely by which rest type replenished their resources, fewer people would stress this.

Moving to encounter powers then moving only halfway away from encounter powers has created problems that didn't exist in quite the same way before (although LFQW was always a problem; this is a new set of problems).

[Valmark]

I've played in plenty of encounters where monsters start doing suboptimal things mid-encounter because it was too lethal/difficult for the party to handle, and trust me, everyone sees through it and it leaves the table with a bad feeling. Just yesterday I was in an encounter with a Hill Giant and a Mammoth against an unoptimized 3rd-level party with 6 people and after two party members got creamed they spent actions 'rearing on their back legs of the Mammoth and trumpeting, make a DC 10 WIS saving throw or be frightened for one round'.

So let's not. Breaking the 4th wall like this is bad DMing, and if the game encourages DMs to break the 4th wall in order to maintain game balance it it's bad game design.

To be honest, without knowing the specifics the DM seems to have grossly overestimated their group- or the group screwed up, I guess. Both of those enemies have a decent chance of killing a 3rd level character right off the bat, I think.

There should be a distinction between a DM/Party making a mistake and the game being badly designed. The only time I recall having trouble getting a SR in was because the DM grossly mistook the time it took (we entered the Dungeon of th Dead Three in Descent of Avernus at midnight, why the hell a short rest would make it morning?)- I've rested plenty of times in dungeons and also had plenty of single-fight days- everything works as long as the DM knows what they are doing. And even if they don't- one of my groups has a DM that clearly knows less then what they think, but we are still having fun even if we did ran on positive thinking alone sometimes (as in, our resources were horribly depleted).

[Asisreo1]

If classes didn't vary widely by which rest type replenished their resources, fewer people would stress this.

This variation was accounted for. They know that warlock get spells back on short rests and sorcerers have nothing they recover on short rests. It wouldn't make sense for them to make classes with rest variations but not account for the very system they've created.

Warlocks without their resources are much stronger than other spellcasters without their resources, even barring eldritch blast. By "strength," I don't exclusively mean damage, either. However, by 5th-level, warlock's cantrips (and catrip-lookalikes aka invocations) are rivaling and surpassing the 1st-level spells of other classes. So a Warlock that doesn't get a long rest still does significant good for the team.

Monks without their resources still have three attacks, deflect missile, and bonus speed, and a feature from their monastic tradition that may or may not be at-will. But monks do always start a day with their resources, so it's moot to compare a resourceless monk to a fighter. You'd have to compare both based on their full resources over the adventuring day, which should be around 2 encounters before the party would need to rest one-way-or-another.


And the designers knew that players would value long rests more than short rests, which is why they forced parties to wait 24-hours before their next one. Got out of a long rest an hour ago and finished a fight and want a long rest? Well, hope you barricaded your area to withstand 23 hours of uninterrupted waiting (if it's interrupted, that's another battle which pushes the encounter day past just encounter-long rest-encounter-long rest). And for 15 hours, the short rest users have plenty of time to replenish their resources if the DM intends to bring the dungeon to them.

[cutlery]

This variation was accounted for.

Not on short-work days it wasn't. Spreading out SR and LR resources assumes a certain amount of rests of each type per day. This doesn't happen in every game; probably not in most games.

It doesn't matter if you think that means the people playing those games are wrong - that's still how they play the game.

[Deathtongue]

Either way, It's relatively simple not cluing your player into you allowing short rests by easing up encounters or not.The DM thought he was being clever and opaque by having the mammoth-riding hill giant start trumpeting and causing mass fear checks, too.

[Sorinth]

The 6-8 encounters balance isn't overall game balance it's about PC to PC balance. With 6-8 encounters every PC is expected to contribute similar amounts. Some encounters will be won with a big spell, but others will be fights of attrition where the spellcaster is saving their big spells and so using cantrips and the melee players shine.

That doesn't mean you the DM need to run 6-8 encounters to have a balanced game though. It means when you run a different number of encounters some PCs will be stronger then others. It's table dependent how much that matters. The thing to remember is that variety is more important then balance. When adventuring days vary from one day to another it naturally creates a situation where different players will shine. So some adventuring days the nova characters will shine, other days the skill-based characters will shine, other days the RP players will shine, etc...

[Asisreo1]

Not on short-work days it wasn't. Spreading out SR and LR resources assumes a certain amount of rests of each type per day. This doesn't happen in every game; probably not in most games.

It doesn't matter if you think that means the people playing those games are wrong - that's still how they play the game.
I don't know why you'd think I believe any group is playing incorrectly as I've never made that claim. In fact, I'm saying that these groups are playing correctly and only when it causes distress should a DM evaluate things.

I'm advocating that 1-encounter days don't break anything when a DM understands what they're doing. Which is the key to all aspects of the game, right? A perfectly-balanced CR fight could swing sideways if the DM decides to throw intellect devourers at a group of barbarians. An extremely put-together intrigue adventure can be throw to the wayside if noone engages.

Most of these groups are unconcerned about challenge in the sense of combat. These groups may be better served with a different system. But those groups that are concerned with Player to Player balance needn't feel obliged to run multiple encounters as long as their single-encounter days have meaningful difficulty relative to each players.

Ultimately, the number of encounters is in the hands of the DM. The DM can see that players want 1 encounter a day and can balance based on that. Whether your adventures make it difficult to fulfill this or encourages this is up to the DM, but the design space is open.

[cutlery]

I'm advocating that 1-encounter days don't break anything when a DM understands what they're doing.

Nothing breaks anything when the DM understands what they are doing, because it is the DMs world.

However, I suspect that many don't have the entirety of system balance in their heads, nor does the DMG go out of its way to make plain that classes are designed to have several short rests per long. Thus, they have no idea what skewing towards mostly one encounter days does.

As the DMG doesn't really discuss the 8 encounter vs the 1 encounter day, DMs have to figure out this source for potential imbalance for themselves.

Why? Because the bulk of the PHB and DMG are written with the assumption of the 6-8 encounter, 2 SR adventuring day; with DM control over whether those encounters are easy or deadly.

[GreatWyrmGold]

The design isn't that 2 short rests needs to be squeezed into play. It's letting you know that typically, a party will want this short rest or else they may face a TPK. If they end up not needing the rest, great! They've paced themselves well or were lucky enough not to need them. However, a DM should be advised to actually let the party short rest even in their hostile area if they need it.
One of those just seems like a nicer way of saying the other. What's the practical difference is that "We expect a party to need two short rests per adventuring day" and "A party will usually want two short rests per day, but if they don't need it that's cool too"?



This variation was accounted for.
Yeah, by telling people how many encounters and short rests they expect a party to need. The problem (aside from WotC's improving but still present issues balancing casters and CRing monsters) is that this isn't a schedule that fits every adventure...or most stories not designed around it.

So you're simultaneously claiming that the variation was accounted for, and trying to deny how they accounted for the variation. Because really, how the hell else would you balance long/short/non-rest-dependent classes except by controlling the ratios of rests and encounters?

[Asisreo1]

Nothing breaks anything when the DM understands what they are doing, because it is the DMs world.

However, I suspect that many don't have the entirety of system balance in their heads,
We are in 100% agreement up until

nor does the DMG go out of its way to make plain that classes are designed to have several short rests per long. Thus, they have no idea what skewing towards mostly one encounter days does.
Here. This is exactly what I'm fundamentally disagreeing with you. The DMG doesn't say that classes are designed around a ratio of short to long rests because they're not. A DM should be aware of what a single-encounter entails, and newer DM's may not quite understand this point quite well (though the ones I've seen never had this issue), but neither the fighter, nor the warlock, nor the sorcerer, nor the rogue, nor the wizard, or bard were built with any sort of average ratio in-mind in their designs. They work together just as well when there's 0 short rests as they do when there's 7.



As the DMG doesn't really discuss the 8 encounter vs the 1 encounter day, DMs have to figure out this source for potential imbalance for themselves.

Why? Because the bulk of the PHB and DMG are written with the assumption of the 6-8 encounter, 2 SR adventuring day; with DM control over whether those encounters are easy or deadly.
If this were true, why do almost none of their adventures closely prescribe to this outside of maybe ToA, CoS, and OotA? Even those aren't even a consistent 6-8 encounter with designated short rest opportunities but adventures written both before and after the official DMG don't always prescribe to this.

I ran an adventure yesterday from the Essential Kit's Dragon of Icespire Peak with 2 encounters and no short rest opportunities made apparent enough to the players that they'd rest. There wasn't some index telling me where the party should rest that would have me make it clear to the party that they should rest nor was there even enough encounters in the dungeon to reach 5 encounters within the given area.

An article written prior to the DMG even says this:



This system is designed to help DMs gauge combat difficulty. It's not an assumed part of the game, in the sense that we don't expect DMs to follow these rules in building adventures the same way that players follow certain rules when creating characters.
So I doubt they made these assumptions, removed them, then put them back in at the last minute just to not mention to the DM's how important these assumptions are for a good game. They do want to make a quality product, and not explaining a key assumption would be counter to that.

[noob]

To be fair, what else is he supposed to say? Do you think he'd say "you're all doing it wrong, we demand that you play drastically differently"? Of course he's going to confirm that the game can be played in the way that most people actually do play it.

That doesn't change the fact that short-rest vs. long-rest class balance is fakakta. Or, at the very least, that there are a whole lot more tables where it's a disadvantage to be a short-rest-based class, than tables where it's an advantage.

I expect 6E to have a basic assumption of Critical Role-influenced play, meaning it's expected that:


The majority of the session will be RP, not combat
The setting is open-world and player-driven, which further implies:

It's implausible that every one of the innumerable goals that the party can choose is always on a strict timer
Taking a real-life month to play one in-game day feels like We're In The Endgame Now, rather than a natural pace



I think that making an edition of dnd go with those standards is like having a brick manufacturer decide to instead sell chisels.
There is already people who sells chisels (heavily character impersonation based rpgs aka: the role part of roleplay) and the brick manufacturer is know for their bricks and have been criticised just for making more modern bricks at some point (4e which made balance actually much better) and reverted to older bricks.
No they are extremely unlikely to start producing chisels no matter how cool it would be to introduce players to roleplay by starting with character based games.

Open worlds are not a decision taken at the system: it is a gm taken decision and no matter the rpg you will have dms that turns it in a rail track and gms that turns it in an open world.(except for gmless systems but it is an entirely different kind of category)

[Edea]

...should all casters just operate the way warlocks do? Have a small number of slots that auto-grow in level up to 5th and refresh on short rest, then 1/day each for 6th and up?

[Deathtongue]

...should all casters just operate the way warlocks do? Have a small number of slots that auto-grow in level up to 5th and refresh on short rest, then 1/day each for 6th and up?With a duration of short rest being an hour? Not really. It would completely kill off spellcasting being useful out-of-combat. It would also make most of the lower-level spell list useless. I think it's still kind of cool that 9th level characters still cast Cause Fear, but there's no incentive to do that (because Fear is superior, even with Cause Fear is upcast) with the Warlock's spell scheme.

If it was like 4E D&D where you got a short rest after every encounter, that would be better. You'd still have the problem of much of the spell list going obsolete every two levels, which is why 4E D&D frequently made you recycle lower-level powers into higher-level ones, so you wouldn't just horde a bunch of utility powers (well, more than the game already gave) and a handful of combat powers.

[cutlery]

he DMG doesn't say that classes are designed around a ratio of short to long rests because they're not.

Nothing you have written thus far has or will convince me of that.

Shifting the ratio of short to long rests will absolutely shift the balance of power between classes.

5 classes enter thunderdome: Battlemaster Fighter, Evoker Wizard, Hexblade Warlock, Arcane Trickster Rogue, Zealot Barbarian

Each at level 9.

Day 1: 12 encounters, 5 short rests. Who feels weakest at the end of the day?

Day 2: 1 encounter, day over. Who feels strongest?

The power balance between these classes in these scenarios is not the same. Games that trend more towards one or the other will have a corresponding difference power balance at the table. The DMG ought to mention this more clearly when it talks about combat and resting.

[Asisreo1]

One of those just seems like a nicer way of saying the other. What's the practical difference is that "We expect a party to need two short rests per adventuring day" and "A party will usually want two short rests per day, but if they don't need it that's cool too"?

It's neither. What they're saying is: "Oh, by the way. If you've made an adventure with 10 encounters in it and didn't account for resting at all between these, then your party will probably die unless you give them a breather or two partway through. Just letting you know if you were wondering."


So you're simultaneously claiming that the variation was accounted for, and trying to deny how they accounted for the variation. Because really, how the hell else would you balance long/short/non-rest-dependent classes except by controlling the ratios of rests and encounters?
The problem is that you're still thinking like a mathematician and not like a designer. Yes, there's math involved but there's also playtesting. There were alot of playing before the game came out, alot of groups had built one encounter a day adventures. That's probably all they had time for.

Here's how you balance it: take the warlock and sorcerer at level 6. Two diametrically opposed casters in terms of short and long rest recoveries. What does a warlock have at 0 short-rests? They have 2 spell slots while the sorcerer has 10. The 2 slots the warlock has are 3rd-level while the sorcerer has 3 3rd-level slots, 3 2nd-level slots, and 4 1st-level slots. It seems that the sorcerer has the upper hand, but the warlock has medium armor proficiency, pact boons, more spells known, and invocations. The warlock's eldritch blast can do about 19 damage and is an attack roll. The sorcerer's most powerful 1st-level attack roll spell is Chromatic Orb (PHB atm, chaos bolt may be stronger), this does roughly 13.5 damage or 17.5 if it's draconic boosted. The warlock's at-will is stronger than a sorcerer's 1st-level spell.

But now let's check the other direction. Let's say there's a 6 encounter day with 2 short rests. With warlock being pretty balanced before, surely it zooms ahead now.

The warlock has everything it had before opposed to the sorcerer, but it now has 6 of these higher-level spells. A sorcerer could convert all their slots into those 6 3rd-level spells, but it would leave them still looking pale, right? Well, they also have wider spell diversity, metamagic, and efficiency which a warlock lacks. A warlock uses all 6 of their spells as third-level spells no matter how wasteful it may be. The warlock might need to cast command, but there's only 1 target right now. They might need to cast misty step at the moment. They might need to cast suggestion or mirror image. Casting these spells like this isn't very efficient. A sorcerer can keep their spells casted very efficient.

How about 7 short rests? Well, the warlock gets an insane number of spells castable throughout the adventure. We'll pretend that they somehow squeezed 7 short rests and had combat encounters on top. Yes, they are good but they still aren't necessarily "beating" sorcerer. Because sorcerer gets spells like haste, hypnotic pattern, enlarge/reduce, sleet storm.

Basically, balance is established because the characters are granted a degree of uniqueness to each other. They're inimitable from one another and so direct one-to-one comparisons are less about equity and more of pros and cons based on playstyles.

[Asisreo1]

Nothing you have written thus far has or will convince me of that.

Shifting the ratio of short to long rests will absolutely shift the balance of power between classes.

5 classes enter thunderdome: Battlemaster Fighter, Evoker Wizard, Hexblade Warlock, Arcane Trickster Rogue, Zealot Barbarian

Each at level 9.

Day 1: 12 encounters, 5 short rests. Who feels weakest at the end of the day?

Day 2: 1 encounter, day over. Who feels strongest?

The power balance between these classes in these scenarios is not the same. Games that trend more towards one or the other will have a corresponding difference power balance at the table. The DMG ought to mention this more clearly when it talks about combat and resting.
You're basing it on a metric of feel, but that's subjective to the player. If a player wants to play with a diverse set of options, no amount of rests will change the fact that they'll feel barbarians are weaker at the end of the day. If a character values being a gish, they'll feel extremely weak equipping their evoker wizard elf with a shortsword.

[Sorinth]

...should all casters just operate the way warlocks do? Have a small number of slots that auto-grow in level up to 5th and refresh on short rest, then 1/day each for 6th and up?

To a large degreet yes, by limiting the number of slots that the caster can actually use they balanced a full caster with martials. At the end of the day if you wanted a caster Warlock they felt good, if you wanted a Gish they did that well with Hexblade (Talking mon-classed here) so overall Warlock got things right balance wise and in terms of how a spellcaster should feel.

[Deathtongue]

The power balance between these classes in these scenarios is not the same. Games that trend more towards one or the other will have a corresponding difference power balance at the table. The DMG ought to mention this more clearly when it talks about combat and resting.

One thing that's missed in these discussions of 'this class isn't long rest dependent!' is how every single class is gated by their hit dice. Especially if you don't have an efficient way to heal in your party -- which is definitely the case in T1. I think the 4-6 resource-draining encounters per long rest recommend is completely whack advice at levels 1-5, even bruiser classes like the fighter and barbarian have a very good chance of being completely out of gas after encounter 2 or 3. It's only well into T2 do characters have enough juice to do a classic 'no long rest' dungeon crawl.

[KorvinStarmast]

As the DMG doesn't really discuss the 8 encounter vs the 1 encounter day, DMs have to figure out this source for potential imbalance for themselves. I agree that they missed a trick here. As a follow on to the above discussion, the game was also written under the assumption that the party would be working together, not competing with each other.

...should all casters just operate the way warlocks do? I am very tempted to make a few adventures like that. But there's one problem with that: the MM spell casters (except a few in Volos's) aren't built that way, so it's quite a bit of work for the DM to fix that.

My brother still does not "get" warlocks, and now he has an NPC warlock (volo's style) that he's asked me a lot about since I play a warlock and a bunch of things warlocks to has surprised him. I'll not use that meta knowledge against the NPC if it ends up being an opponent, but I for sure am glad that he's gotten to see my PC grow through the levels and see how a warlock is a bit different.

[GreatWyrmGold]

-snip-
I tend to be pretty death-of-the-author-ey—even when discussing authorial intent itself.

This is all the more true when discussing something worked on by a team rather than a single individual. An indie game made by one producer-designer-writer-artist-editor can conceivably have a singular unified intent behind it, but collaborative works require collaboration, and humans being humans they will not always agree. D&D might not have the

Look at the credits of D&D Basic Rules (https://media.wizards.com/downloads/dnd/DnDBasicRules.pdf). Even leaving out art, marketing, consultation, "further development," and (obviously) the section listing ye olde D&D creators, I count twenty people credited with the direction, design, writing, and refinement of D&D, all of whom had an impact on the final product. I don't see how anyone could claim all twenty of them agreed on everything. (If you somehow argue that the person figuring out how to word a rule, the people suggesting better ways to do so, and the person managing everyone else in the whole process have zero impact on the end product, we can drop that down to four...which is still quite a few to assert share a perfectly singular vision for the balance of D&D.)

But let's say that either the team did share a singular vision for D&D, even though I don't think you can find three people on this forum who agree on what D&D should be. Or maybe the team found a way to divine their net intent as distributed throughout the entire work. Or maybe you only count the intent of one person in the process as mattering. Whatever.
If this applies to D&D, it applies to film. Do you think Tommy Wiseau intended The Room to be a comedy, or do you think he made a drama hilariously badly? This is an extreme example, but if authorial intent

And let's not pretend there isn't motive. I'll quote meandean's explanation:

To be fair, what else is he supposed to say? Do you think he'd say "you're all doing it wrong, we demand that you play drastically differently"? Of course he's going to confirm that the game can be played in the way that most people actually do play it.
To expand on it...there's a pretty strong culture in the TRPG community (and large parts of the gaming community at large) that there should be no "right" way to play, and that people who try to insist others play the way they prefer playing are jerks. Hell, look at this thread—it's divided between people who say there's no "right" way to distribute rests and people who say there is and shouldn't be.

In general, when gaming companies contact their fans (or any company contacts its customers), they're going to focus on whatever's most profitable rather than whatever's truest. They will avoid saying anything that could get them sued or charged with fraud, but anything that's technically true or unprovable is fair game. Intent is unprovable.
Now, why wouldn't a WotC employee speaking in official WotC capacity want to say that there was one specific way to play D&D? In case it's not obvious, there are two primary downsides:
Players could easily get pissed because the entire company would be perceived as one of those "stop having fun" guys. This leads to a big PR hit, affecting future sales, for no benefit to WotC.
Players who play the "wrong" way may be disinclined to buy further D&D products. Worse, potential customers whose gaming tastes clash with the perceived mandate might decide to pass on D&D! Again, this is hurts WoTC without benefiting them.
Of course Jeremy Crawford would downplay anything that could be perceived as him telling people how to play (or not to play) the game. That only hurts Hasbro, WotC, and his chances of getting a raise this year.


TL;DR: There's no reason to think any individual on the creative team can identify a coherent intent for the entire team, and there would be strong incentive against revealing it if it would delegitimize entire forms of play.

So. If we accept that I've demonstrated we should analyze the rules absent any official statements by one guy speaking in an official capacity about how you can play D&D any way you like as long as you keep playing, we have only the text.

Let's start with an overly-formal yet questionably-organized a priori analysis, based on a few assumptions:
Resource management is an important component of the game.
Many important resources are recovered by resting.
All classes are supposed to be balanced.
Not all classes rely on rests equally.
Players are intended to face challenges appropriate to (ie, "balanced against") their current level of power.
Corollary 1: How effective characters are, whether as a cohesive unit or relative to other characters, is significant for game balance. (3, 5)
Corollary 2: Rest distribution affects resource management. (1, 2)
Corollary 3: Rest distribution affects how effectively characters can overcome encounters. (C2)
Corollary 4: Rest distribution affects relative effectiveness between characters. (4, C2)
Corollary 5: Rest distribution affects both encounter balance and class balance. (C1, C3, C4)
(I left out some of the more obvious assumptions, like that resources affect effectiveness.)
If you have a counterargument to any of these points, this is the time to provide them, because these assumptions are core to many peoples' positions on this issue.

Given C5, it should be obvious that rest distribution—that is, the "schedule of an adventuring day"—is important to game balance. If WotC cares about how their game is balanced, they need to have some idea of how rests will be distributed, because that influences how much resources classes have per encounter and relative to one another.

Luckily, we don't have to speculate about the existence of such a standard, because the DMG gives us one:

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.
Despite your attempts at defining this as not a guideline for how many encounters and short rests you should have per day, but a suggestion of how many encounters and short rests you should have per day, it's still telling DMs how many encounters and short rests they should have per day.


It's neither. What they're saying is: "Oh, by the way. If you've made an adventure with 10 encounters in it and didn't account for resting at all between these, then your party will probably die unless you give them a breather or two partway through. Just letting you know if you were wondering."
That's the same thing except less informative! Finding different ways to phrase the information does not change it! You are still providing guidelines on how many adventures a party should face per day!


The problem is that you're still thinking like a mathematician and not like a designer. Yes, there's math involved but there's also playtesting. There were alot of playing before the game came out, alot of groups had built one encounter a day adventures. That's probably all they had time for.
Ha ha, no, they playtested more than one encounter a day. Playtesting is friggin' important, and it doesn't take that long to play through an entire adventuring day. A bunch of easily-distracted amateurs can blow through that in one or two in a month of weekly sessions without even trying. People who know how the game works on a deep level and are focused on the game (in exclusion to both outside distractions and the narrative elements which would otherwise be present, since they're irrelevant to a playtest) could go through them much more quickly. (And we are, of course, assuming that the designers of D&D don't like D&D enough to play it on the weekends. Which seems like a questionable assumption...)
Quick aside about a form of game development I know something about (or at least have links for): When a professional at the development company "playtests"* a game, they go about it one of two ways. Either they play through the game and look for little issues likely to crop up, or they push the game in implausible directions to make sure no weird bugs crop up. The latter is exemplified by the "smoke test," which involves leaving the game running overnight to make sure there aren't any systems claiming system resources without relinquishing them (which can cause problems, but only on longer timescales which aren't obvious in a typical play session).
You're going to say something about how TRPGs aren't video games, and that's part of my point, so hang on:
TRPGs don't need smoke tests. You don't need to check for weird technical issues caused, because the systems involved are literally spelled out in plain black and white. You do need to check for odd rules interactions, but you do that with editors, because if the designers didn't notice the interactions when designing the rules, they're not likely to just come across them in an arbitrary single encounter.

*It's technically called Quality Assurance. Playtesting instead refers to giving the game to players and getting feedback, which is presumably why the playtesting credits mention 175,000 D&D fans but no WotC employees


Here's how you balance it: take the warlock and sorcerer at level 6. Two diametrically opposed casters in terms of short and long rest recoveries. What does a warlock have at 0 short-rests? They have 2 spell slots while the sorcerer has 10.
-snip-
It seems that the sorcerer has the upper hand, but the warlock has medium armor proficiency, pact boons, more spells known, and invocations. The warlock's eldritch blast can do about 19 damage and is an attack roll. The sorcerer's most powerful 1st-level attack roll spell is Chromatic Orb (PHB atm, chaos bolt may be stronger), this does roughly 13.5 damage or 17.5 if it's draconic boosted. The warlock's at-will is stronger than a sorcerer's 1st-level spell.

But now let's check the other direction. Let's say there's a 6 encounter day with 2 short rests. With warlock being pretty balanced before, surely it zooms ahead now.

The warlock has everything it had before opposed to the sorcerer, but it now has 6 of these higher-level spells. A sorcerer could convert all their slots into those 6 3rd-level spells, but it would leave them still looking pale, right? Well, they also have wider spell diversity, metamagic, and efficiency which a warlock lacks. A warlock uses all 6 of their spells as third-level spells no matter how wasteful it may be. The warlock might need to cast command, but there's only 1 target right now. They might need to cast misty step at the moment. They might need to cast suggestion or mirror image. Casting these spells like this isn't very efficient. A sorcerer can keep their spells casted very efficient.

How about 7 short rests? Well, the warlock gets an insane number of spells castable throughout the adventure. We'll pretend that they somehow squeezed 7 short rests and had combat encounters on top. Yes, they are good but they still aren't necessarily "beating" sorcerer. Because sorcerer gets spells like haste, hypnotic pattern, enlarge/reduce, sleet storm.

So, when you want me to think like a designer and not a mathematician, you are in fact asking me to reduce game balance to a series of arbitrary numbers. And by describing how you find balance, after mentioning that playtesting is a thing, you don't bother to mention any example of playing these arbitrary characters! I'd say you're thinking like a mathematician and not a designer, but mathematicians bother to explain why they chose to compare and manipulate the numbers they compare and manipulate, so...

You want me to think like a designer? I'm thinking like a designer, and this kind of number-crunching sounds like it would be pretty useful when writing up early drafts of the warlock. It's something I'd discard once the classes had firm enough drafts that we could make playable characters from them.


Basically, balance is established because the characters are granted a degree of uniqueness to each other. They're inimitable from one another and so direct one-to-one comparisons are less about equity and more of pros and cons based on playstyles.
No. A feather is very different from a lead weight, but that doesn't mean that they're balanced. A pawn and a rook have different strengths and weaknesses, but they're not "balanced". Look at 3.5 and tell me that the monk and druid are balanced because they're really, really different.
I suspect you've seen the early Extra Credits episode on game balance, but what you don't seem to understand is that incomparable attributes are not automatically balanced. A cantrip which lets you deal one point of damage and one which lets you teleport to anywhere within a mile are completely incomparable; the first is useless if you're trying to travel, the second is useless if you're trying to defend a village. But the quantities matter, too; the two examples are very obviously imbalanced, because the teleporting cantrip is useful in far more situations than the single-point cantrip.

I realize that it sounds like I'm trying to make your argument sound dumb, but...that's because it sounds dumb. I'm just trying to strip it down to the dumbness at its core, and then find something to say until it feels like I'm not just dismissing your point. I don't know how to make this reply not sound mean one way or another.



One thing that's missed in these discussions of 'this class isn't long rest dependent!' is how every single class is gated by their hit dice.
To an extent, yes. But hit dice are, in my experience, far less important than class-specific resources. After a while without a long rest, a warlock is just short on hit dice* while a wizard is reduced to produce flame and profanity. Hit dice are omitted not because they don't exist, or even because they don't matter, but because other things matter so much more.

*Depending on level and invocation selection, but I think it's fair to say that a warlock's bread and butter powers are either at-will or restored on short rests. But we reduce warlocks to their spell slots for the same reason we leave out hit dice—adding that complication doesn't change the fact that they are far more dependent on numerous short rests than they are on frequent long rests, while wizards are more dependent on long than short, despite possessing abilities which recharge on a short rest.


I noticed a typo earlier in the thread that accidentally and hilariously captures the flaws in CR assignment.
Now CR is in no way analogous to CR

[Deathtongue]

To an extent, yes. But hit dice are, in my experience, far less important than class-specific resources. After a while without a long rest, a warlock is just short on hit dice* while a wizard is reduced to produce flame and profanity. Hit dice are omitted not because they don't exist, or even because they don't matter, but because other things matter so much more.This is not the case in T1, where about 75% of D&D games take place. It's really easy to burn through your hit dice in three or even two encounters. And due to the health/damage asymmetry of low level (28 hit points is considered reasonable for a third-level fighter) you really do not want to be starting encounters further away than 'close to topped off'.

A fighter or paladin or cleric gets taken out by a lucky critical or just a combat that goes longer than expected where the DM rolls almost maximum damage the first encounter, and after a short rest the melee characters is already running on empty. If they lose most of or even just half their hit points again on the next encounter, that's that. Time to rest.

[Asisreo1]

I tend to be pretty death-of-the-author-ey—even when discussing authorial intent itself.

This is all the more true when discussing something worked on by a team rather than a single individual. An indie game made by one producer-designer-writer-artist-editor can conceivably have a singular unified intent behind it, but collaborative works require collaboration, and humans being humans they will not always agree. D&D might not have the

Look at the credits of D&D Basic Rules (https://media.wizards.com/downloads/dnd/DnDBasicRules.pdf). Even leaving out art, marketing, consultation, "further development," and (obviously) the section listing ye olde D&D creators, I count twenty people credited with the direction, design, writing, and refinement of D&D, all of whom had an impact on the final product. I don't see how anyone could claim all twenty of them agreed on everything. (If you somehow argue that the person figuring out how to word a rule, the people suggesting better ways to do so, and the person managing everyone else in the whole process have zero impact on the end product, we can drop that down to four...which is still quite a few to assert share a perfectly singular vision for the balance of D&D.)

But let's say that either the team did share a singular vision for D&D, even though I don't think you can find three people on this forum who agree on what D&D should be. Or maybe the team found a way to divine their net intent as distributed throughout the entire work. Or maybe you only count the intent of one person in the process as mattering. Whatever.
If this applies to D&D, it applies to film. Do you think Tommy Wiseau intended The Room to be a comedy, or do you think he made a drama hilariously badly? This is an extreme example, but if authorial intent

And let's not pretend there isn't motive. I'll quote meandean's explanation:

To expand on it...there's a pretty strong culture in the TRPG community (and large parts of the gaming community at large) that there should be no "right" way to play, and that people who try to insist others play the way they prefer playing are jerks. Hell, look at this thread—it's divided between people who say there's no "right" way to distribute rests and people who say there is and shouldn't be.

In general, when gaming companies contact their fans (or any company contacts its customers), they're going to focus on whatever's most profitable rather than whatever's truest. They will avoid saying anything that could get them sued or charged with fraud, but anything that's technically true or unprovable is fair game. Intent is unprovable.
Now, why wouldn't a WotC employee speaking in official WotC capacity want to say that there was one specific way to play D&D? In case it's not obvious, there are two primary downsides:
Players could easily get pissed because the entire company would be perceived as one of those "stop having fun" guys. This leads to a big PR hit, affecting future sales, for no benefit to WotC.
Players who play the "wrong" way may be disinclined to buy further D&D products. Worse, potential customers whose gaming tastes clash with the perceived mandate might decide to pass on D&D! Again, this is hurts WoTC without benefiting them.
Of course Jeremy Crawford would downplay anything that could be perceived as him telling people how to play (or not to play) the game. That only hurts Hasbro, WotC, and his chances of getting a raise this year.


TL;DR: There's no reason to think any individual on the creative team can identify a coherent intent for the entire team, and there would be strong incentive against revealing it if it would delegitimize entire forms of play.


Not everyone knows everything about the book, but it feels like a disservice to automatically assume that they don't know what they were trying to say because it doesn't match your assumptions about what it should say.

It's basically thinking "Yeah, they said vegetables are good for you, but there's no way they all agree on that. There's too many dietitians to be unanimous. Plus, they might have meant fruit, not veggies. Therefore, they should say veggies are not good for you but fruit might be."

It's questioning the experts based on conjecture. That type of logic is inadmissible for proof.



So. If we accept that I've demonstrated we should analyze the rules absent any official statements by one guy speaking in an official capacity about how you can play D&D any way you like as long as you keep playing, we have only the text.

Yes! We only have the text. This is what's most important because anything else are assumptions based on what we think the game is rather than what we know the game is.



Let's start with an overly-formal yet questionably-organized a priori analysis, based on a few assumptions:
Resource management is an important component of the game.
Many important resources are recovered by resting.
All classes are supposed to be balanced.
Not all classes rely on rests equally.
Players are intended to face challenges appropriate to (ie, "balanced against") their current level of power.
Corollary 1: How effective characters are, whether as a cohesive unit or relative to other characters, is significant for game balance. (3, 5)
Corollary 2: Rest distribution affects resource management. (1, 2)
Corollary 3: Rest distribution affects how effectively characters can overcome encounters. (C2)
Corollary 4: Rest distribution affects relative effectiveness between characters. (4, C2)
Corollary 5: Rest distribution affects both encounter balance and class balance. (C1, C3, C4)
(I left out some of the more obvious assumptions, like that resources affect effectiveness.)
If you have a counterargument to any of these points, this is the time to provide them, because these assumptions are core to many peoples' positions on this issue.

And here's the problem. Anyone can say anything is anything based on assumptions that they want to make. Whether anyone thinks the assumptions should be the case or not is irrelevant. It's fat that should be skimmed.

From the very beginning, assumption #1, I have a problem. It's not that I don't think it should be true. It's true in many cases. But is it based on text or just what you imagine a TTRPG ought to be? It's why I want you to put your assumptions to rest and work with only what you have.

You would not allow a player to dodge an attack because the assumption is that they're dextrous enough to dodge on-average, so why should we assume the rules because of assumptions. We have nothing, and we should be honest about ourselves that we really don't have evidence for or against these assumptions.

My goal is not to bring my own assumption, but to make it clear of which assumptions are safe to make and which are not.



Given C5, it should be obvious that rest distribution—that is, the "schedule of an adventuring day"—is important to game balance. If WotC cares about how their game is balanced, they need to have some idea of how rests will be distributed, because that influences how much resources classes have per encounter and relative to one another.

Luckily, we don't have to speculate about the existence of such a standard, because the DMG gives us one:

Despite your attempts at defining this as not a guideline for how many encounters and short rests you should have per day, but a suggestion of how many encounters and short rests you should have per day, it's still telling DMs how many encounters and short rests they should have per day.

But, in plain english, that is not what it's saying. If I told you:

"Assuming a typically sunny day over the course of a full playground visit, a child will likely need a nap after 4 hours of play."

Are you going to say, in earnest, that a child is required to visit a playground for 4 hours every sunny day if you want them to get maximum exercise?

I wouldn't, because that's not what it's saying.




That's the same thing except less informative! Finding different ways to phrase the information does not change it! You are still providing guidelines on how many adventures a party should face per day!

The problem is that you are thinking of different information that should be conveyed in your opinion. It's giving exactly the information it's trying to tell you. When they write something, then double down verbally, but it's not being accepted because you've already made up in your mind what you think they meant, it's not really their fault.



Ha ha, no, they playtested more than one encounter a day. Playtesting is friggin' important, and it doesn't take that long to play through an entire adventuring day. A bunch of easily-distracted amateurs can blow through that in one or two in a month of weekly sessions without even trying. People who know how the game works on a deep level and are focused on the game (in exclusion to both outside distractions and the narrative elements which would otherwise be present, since they're irrelevant to a playtest) could go through them much more quickly. (And we are, of course, assuming that the designers of D&D don't like D&D enough to play it on the weekends. Which seems like a questionable assumption...)

Yes, they playtested more than one encounter days. They probably playtested up to 10 encounter days too. The point is that one-encounter days were definitely included in their playtesting and it was fine to the playtesters and designers based on the data they collected.




[list=3] TRPGs don't need smoke tests. You don't need to check for weird technical issues caused, because the systems involved are literally spelled out in plain black and white. You do need to check for odd rules interactions, but you do that with editors, because if the designers didn't notice the interactions when designing the rules, they're not likely to just come across them in an arbitrary single encounter.

But I'm saying that what they say is what they say. Others are trying to find meaning between the lines when the ink is visible.


So, when you want me to think like a designer and not a mathematician, you are in fact asking me to reduce game balance to a series of arbitrary numbers. And by describing how you find balance, after mentioning that playtesting is a thing, you don't bother to mention any example of playing these arbitrary characters! I'd say you're thinking like a mathematician and not a designer, but mathematicians bother to explain why they chose to compare and manipulate the numbers they compare and manipulate, so...

No. I've playtested the warlock and sorcerer myself plenty of times, and they've been playtested officially.

However, there was only two times I even shown numbers, and that's spell slot counts and EB-AB damage compared to CO. Afterwards, it gets non-numerical. You can't really process the difference between evard's black tentacles and twin polymorph into a calculator but they're both unique to each of the characters.



You want me to think like a designer? I'm thinking like a designer, and this kind of number-crunching sounds like it would be pretty useful when writing up early drafts of the warlock. It's something I'd discard once the classes had firm enough drafts that we could make playable characters from them.

But it's literally the playtest-approved version of the warlock. People have actually played it and thought it was well-balanced. My own players and I think warlocks are well-balanced after playing them.



No. A feather is very different from a lead weight, but that doesn't mean that they're balanced. A pawn and a rook have different strengths and weaknesses, but they're not "balanced". Look at 3.5 and tell me that the monk and druid are balanced because they're really, really different.
I suspect you've seen the early Extra Credits episode on game balance, but what you don't seem to understand is that incomparable attributes are not automatically balanced. A cantrip which lets you deal one point of damage and one which lets you teleport to anywhere within a mile are completely incomparable; the first is useless if you're trying to travel, the second is useless if you're trying to defend a village. But the quantities matter, too; the two examples are very obviously imbalanced, because the teleporting cantrip is useful in far more situations than the single-point cantrip.

No, they aren't. It takes playtesting, which the designers did. Assymetric balance is never perfect, there's a tolerance, but it can still be relatively balanced.

Pawns are balanced to rooks in chess. Unsure if you're aware but pawns are easily discarded. They're just as useful as a rook since without the pawns, there'd be no easy defense for your king nor any easy piece to put pressure on larger pieces like queens, bishops, and knights. They also get to turn into powerful pieces themselves.



I realize that it sounds like I'm trying to make your argument sound dumb, but...that's because it sounds dumb. I'm just trying to strip it down to the dumbness at its core, and then find something to say until it feels like I'm not just dismissing your point. I don't know how to make this reply not sound mean one way or another.

It's almost like I predicted this type of behavior in my OP. That people would want to make me sound like a fool while I'm doing my best to help DM's out of their slump about an imagined barrier between balance and adventure design. A barrier that has been placed based on assumptions on what their TTRPG should be in their minds rather than what the designers have said officially and in the rulebooks.

[diplomancer]

Here's a random thought; go full gamist and tie Long Rests and Short Rests not to a duration of time, but to a certain XP number. Would that solve the issue, at least for those who use XPs? In those cases, the DM would have to deliberately CHOOSE to have only one, very difficult, fight, to have the balance issues (and his players could take that into consideration at character creation)

[cutlery]

From the very beginning, assumption #1, I have a problem. It's not that I don't think it should be true. It's true in many cases. But is it based on text or just what you imagine a TTRPG ought to be? It's why I want you to put your assumptions to rest and work with only what you have.



Are you trying to now argue that the current rules don't map out a complex resource management system?

If no one at your table cares to play the resource management game, then sure. have as many or as few encounters as you like. Why even track spell slots or hit points, either?





It's almost like I predicted this type of behavior in my OP. That people would want to make me sound like a fool while I'm doing my best to help DM's out of their slump about an imagined barrier between balance and adventure design.


Throwing up your hands and shouting at the moon because people won't agree with you a priori doesn't make you right.

[Asisreo1]

Are you trying to now argue that the current rules don't map out a complex resource management system?

If no one at your table cares to play the resource management game, then sure. have as many or as few encounters as you like. Why even track spell slots or hit points, either?

I do think resource management is an important part of the game, but I have a problem using this as evidence for any sort of conclusion because it's an assumption.

If I assume that you've never played 5e based on what you've replied, it would make an argument much easier that you don't have a complete grasp on balance(which is not an argument I'm making). But I can't work on that assumption because it's still just an assumption.

The game doesn't say resource management is important. We can't just take that for granted merely because we think it's how it should be.

I can imagine an intrigue-type game where HP and spell slots matter just as much as encumbrance and ammo does in other games. That is, they're left unrecorded and only double-checked when things get absurd.


Throwing up your hands and shouting at the moon because people won't agree with you a priori doesn't make you right.
{scrubbed}

I don't think anyone has played the game wrong and I think the short rest-long rest ratio is being taken as a scriptureless gospel. That's the crux of my position. I'm not saying that resources don't need to be considered or that DM's shouldn't take resting into account but neither the DMG nor Jeremy Crawford nor Mike Mearls have said, written, or shown that they designed the game with any sort of ratio in mind.

But why make it personally about me? Do you have any evidence, or are you relying on a priori knowledge and it being self-evident that the game had a certain ratio in mind?

Because even a priori knowledge can be proven. It's what differentiates "knowledge" from misconceptions.

[cutlery]

If I assume that you've never played 5e based on what you've replied, it would make an argument much easier that you don't have a complete grasp on balance(which is not an argument I'm making). But I can't work on that assumption because it's still just an assumption.


{Scrubbed}

[Waazraath]

I don't think anyone has played the game wrong and I think the short rest-long rest ratio is being taken as a scriptureless gospel. That's the crux of my position. I'm not saying that resources don't need to be considered or that DM's shouldn't take resting into account but neither the DMG nor Jeremy Crawford nor Mike Mearls have said, written, or shown that they designed the game with any sort of ratio in mind.

One of the things going here is that Crawford isn't saying what you say he is saying (in the OP), if you get what I'm saying. Yeah, you are free design adventuring days with as many encounters as you like as a DM. But that does not mean that classes aren't designed to be balanced against each other with a certain number of encounters and (short) rest in mind. As, I think, several folks have said already. This implies that if you want classes to be balanced against each other (and D&D being a team game, this is a core assumption imo), you need to take into account the different resource management systems (short rest / long rest / at will). I don't think I've ever met somebody who takes 6-8 encounters with 2 short rests as 'gospel' (in that sense your arguing against a stawman) - its just a guideline: at that encounter/rest frequency, class balance should make sense. In any game I've been, sometimes you have 1 encounter, someties 10 or more, and number of short rests highly varies. Making different classes shine at different adventuring days, which is fine. As long as different characters can shine more or less equally, and for that, the rough guideline functions well.

[MinotaurWarrior]

I just want to add that I do think the different resource refresh rates are actually good for the game, providing a tool for the DM to make more PCs shine. A single session can include both a scry & die 5min day where the wizard feels awesome, followed by a new day where there's 60 rounds of combat and the rogue ends up literally carrying the spellcasters unconscious bodies to safety. Or not even combat - one day where you need to summon and bind some extraplanar beings, and another day where you need to make 100 skill checks.

[Asisreo1]

One of the things going here is that Crawford isn't saying what you say he is saying (in the OP), if you get what I'm saying. Yeah, you are free design adventuring days with as many encounters as you like as a DM. But that does not mean that classes aren't designed to be balanced against each other with a certain number of encounters and (short) rest in mind. As, I think, several folks have said already. This implies that if you want classes to be balanced against each other (and D&D being a team game, this is a core assumption imo), you need to take into account the different resource management systems (short rest / long rest / at will). I don't think I've ever met somebody who takes 6-8 encounters with 2 short rests as 'gospel' (in that sense your arguing against a stawman) - its just a guideline: at that encounter/rest frequency, class balance should make sense. In any game I've been, sometimes you have 1 encounter, someties 10 or more, and number of short rests highly varies. Making different classes shine at different adventuring days, which is fine. As long as different characters can shine more or less equally, and for that, the rough guideline functions well.
I think we're very close to an agreement but we still aren't quite there.

Jeremy did say that the game was not designed with a specific adventuring day in mind. Whether you want to believe him at face value or not is up to you. It would be weird for him to double down on that stance, though, since it's around the same importance as carefully choosing your monsters within an encounter for balance reasons but he's said that a DM should be aware of different monster's abilities compared to the players.

If you want me to explain how they could have excluded rests from their balance, I can explain in a little detail.

[cutlery]

If you want me to explain how they could have excluded rests from their balance, I can explain in a little detail.

You'd best do that, as your opening post didn't and that has been the sustained critique brought up across six pages.

You could have an entire 1-20 campaign without a single combat, but 5e wouldn't be a particularly good ruleset for that game.

Jeremy had a dumb tweet two years ago. Is that the entire basis for this thread? Because he has more than one dumb tweet.

[KorvinStarmast]

I just want to add that I do think the different resource refresh rates are actually good for the game, providing a tool for the DM to make more PCs shine. A single session can include both a scry & die 5min day where the wizard feels awesome, followed by a new day where there's 60 rounds of combat and the rogue ends up literally carrying the spellcasters unconscious bodies to safety. Or not even combat - one day where you need to summon and bind some extraplanar beings, and another day where you need to make 100 skill checks. I agree. And I've seen it work out like this. Some days, our Barbarian shines; some days, the Artificer shines, some days the Monk shines ...

? Because he has more than one dumb tweet. Heh, ain't that the truth?

[Democratus]

All of this thread seems to confirm the 5e design philosophy of "rulings, not rules".

The players and DM will know how much stress is enough for a given party. It's their jobs (all of them) to be aware of this and act accordingly.

[Sindeloke]

Here's a random thought; go full gamist and tie Long Rests and Short Rests not to a duration of time, but to a certain XP number. Would that solve the issue, at least for those who use XPs? In those cases, the DM would have to deliberately CHOOSE to have only one, very difficult, fight, to have the balance issues (and his players could take that into consideration at character creation)

Tracking XP is already so freakin annoying though. We've been doing milestone leveling since our 3.path days just to avoid the absolute nuisance of tracking XP, which in 5e in particular is more fiddly than gold, arrows and encumbrance combined.

I think the best effort-to-results thing that WotC could have done, honestly, is just name the "gritty realism" rest variant something more accurate and less stupid - "wilderness resting"? "exploration resting"? "intrigue resting"? - as contrasted with the explicitly called out as "dungeon resting" default system, and put discussion of rest variants in the PHB as well as the DMG. That ankheg has obviously already left the warren but I can't believe how easy it would have been to cut this problem in half and they just didn't.

[noob]

I think making short rests shorter is the best way to not make adventuring contrived.
I mean it can cause situations "hey now we have to take a one hour short rest so since anything within four kilometers of the dungeon is too dangerous because of the potential search patrols due to the length of the short rest we have to return to the town and if we return to the town we might as well take a long rest due to the travelling time"

[cutlery]

I think making short rests shorter is the best way to not make adventuring contrived.
I mean it can cause situations "hey now we have to take a one hour short rest so since anything within four kilometers of the dungeon is too dangerous because of the potential search patrols due to the length of the short rest we have to return to the town and if we return to the town we might as well take a long rest due to the travelling time"

Yeah; I get that people thought five minutes was too short, but one hour makes people reach for a long rest anyway (or skip it).

I don't think the idea of short and long rests is inherently bad, but that more classes need resources of both types, and short rests should be incentivized by either the rules or the DM a bit more.

It is all too easy to be the only short rester at a table; and when folks are low enough on hit dice anyway they are already pushed to a long rest to get half their total back.

[MaxWilson]

Yeah; I get that people thought five minutes was too short, (A) but one hour makes people reach for a long rest anyway (or skip it).

(A) I've heard people say this but I don't understand it. Do they realize that long rest is only allowed every every 24 hours? If you fight off a bandit attack on the road at 10 am, I can totally see why you might pause for an hour to bandage wounds, go through the bandit's possessions, meditate and regain ki, stretch out your muscles (Action Surge), refresh your spells/wildshapes, etc. But would you really give up completely on all of your plans for that day and sit there doing NOTHING for the next 22 hours or so, until you finish a long rest, right there on the road where you killed the bandits? Does that kind of thing really happen at other peoples' tables?

My experience is the opposite: there's often no reason in particular not to rest for an hour or so after an intense encounter (as long as it's over), but taking an unscheduled long rest is a much bigger and rarer deal.

You can also take a short rest while the party is split and e.g. some party members are scouting ahead while the others rest at their pre-prepared defensive positions.

[cutlery]

(A) I've heard people say this but I don't understand it. Do they realize that long rest is only allowed every every 24 hours?


Generally, no. Or; they'll sit around doing nothing until they can take that long rest.




If you fight off a bandit attack on the road at 10 am, I can totally see why you might pause for an hour to bandage wounds, go through the bandit's possessions, meditate and regain ki, stretch out your muscles (Action Surge), refresh your spells/wildshapes, etc. But would you really give up completely on all of your plans for that day and sit there doing NOTHING for the next 22 hours or so, until you finish a long rest, right there on the road where you killed the bandits? Does that kind of thing really happen at other peoples' tables?


Very much yes. Especially with newer players.




My experience is the opposite: there's often no reason in particular not to rest for an hour or so after an intense encounter (as long as it's over), but taking an unscheduled long rest is a much bigger and rarer deal.

You can also take a short rest while the party is split and e.g. some party members are scouting ahead while the others rest at their pre-prepared defensive positions.

I think experienced players get this, but if a group has a paladin that never channels divinity, a rogue, a wizard, and a cleric that similarly doesn't use their CD - well, it happens.

I think it's the DMs job to make it harder to take a long rest, of course - at least in 5e, and I think there are assumptions built into the system (namely, players can't get a LR whenever they want one). I don't think all tables necessarily work that way.

Something like a 15 minute or 20 minute Short Rest would probably help with that - it would be enough time for the occasional wandering encounter to roll by, though possibly just a bit too short for the magic item identification rules to make sense, and if they get short enough there may be more of them squeezed into the adventuring day.

[Pex]

All of this thread seems to confirm the 5e design philosophy of "rulings, not rules".

The players and DM will know how much stress is enough for a given party. It's their jobs (all of them) to be aware of this and act accordingly.

Confirm it, yes, but that doesn't mean it was a good idea. Stress can come from there not being rules or having vague rules to encourage having rulings. Players want to play, not keep trying to figure out how to play.

[noob]

(A) I've heard people say this but I don't understand it. Do they realize that long rest is only allowed every every 24 hours? If you fight off a bandit attack on the road at 10 am, I can totally see why you might pause for an hour to bandage wounds, go through the bandit's possessions, meditate and regain ki, stretch out your muscles (Action Surge), refresh your spells/wildshapes, etc. But would you really give up completely on all of your plans for that day and sit there doing NOTHING for the next 22 hours or so, until you finish a long rest, right there on the road where you killed the bandits? Does that kind of thing really happen at other peoples' tables?

My experience is the opposite: there's often no reason in particular not to rest for an hour or so after an intense encounter (as long as it's over), but taking an unscheduled long rest is a much bigger and rarer deal.

You can also take a short rest while the party is split and e.g. some party members are scouting ahead while the others rest at their pre-prepared defensive positions.

Splitting the party is both risky in game and can cause varied problems out of game (like the gm having to ask the scouting players to come somewhere else then having to alternate tables if the party is lacking silent long range communication or get theirs cut away) So do that only if you face the most trivial threats ever and know there is no dangerous threats in game (else it might get long at one table and then the other table is waiting too long and it bores the players)

In my example the team walked at least an hour then finding extra stuff until you change day is not that hard (like trying to see if the mayor can approve their weapon from defeated foes selling stand and so on) since a town is involved.
In a travelling scenario in real life people with enough provision that just got attacked would try to get reinforcements (or at least warn other people of the threat) if possible or backtrack and give up on the travel if they are not in the military.
They would not decide "Oh none of us were wounded and did not die(the situation where you would just take one hour to stop panicking) so let us keep going after we recover emotionally without indicating we have opponents to any allies and also we stand still here for an hour instead of doing the logical thing of staying on the move hoping the opponent will not prepare and attack again better prepared"

What you are doing is logical only because of metagaming saying "the gm decided that dangerous encounters would not chain" and outside of the contrived scenario of having the universe be a gm would be downright suicide.

If no opponents were going to attack within the hour then it means that the opponents you found were isolated (armies and groups do know staying close to each other is a good idea) and so you might as well have waited 22 hours.

[Pex]

(A) I've heard people say this but I don't understand it. Do they realize that long rest is only allowed every every 24 hours? If you fight off a bandit attack on the road at 10 am, I can totally see why you might pause for an hour to bandage wounds, go through the bandit's possessions, meditate and regain ki, stretch out your muscles (Action Surge), refresh your spells/wildshapes, etc. But would you really give up completely on all of your plans for that day and sit there doing NOTHING for the next 22 hours or so, until you finish a long rest, right there on the road where you killed the bandits? Does that kind of thing really happen at other peoples' tables?

My experience is the opposite: there's often no reason in particular not to rest for an hour or so after an intense encounter (as long as it's over), but taking an unscheduled long rest is a much bigger and rarer deal.

You can also take a short rest while the party is split and e.g. some party members are scouting ahead while the others rest at their pre-prepared defensive positions.

Yes they do, if not that literal. However, it's not only the game's fault. I do think it was a mistake to have classes differently dependent on long/short rest, but the player can also be at fault for not conserving his resources. In one game I'm in the bard does that. He's quick to cast his high highest level spells and throws out bardic inspiration like candy. Then he laments he's out of spells and wants to rest after the second combat of the day. At the very least he says he's willing to keep going if the party wants and does so, but he makes sure we know he's out of juice. To his credit he is a team player. My only personal annoyance is his going nova the first combat of the day. There are times to go nova, when no matter what the party is taking a long rest after the battle. Those are the climactic battles against the BBEG of the adventure arc. When it's encounter number b it's ok to spend one or two of your resources, but keep a lot more in reserve.

[KorvinStarmast]

In one game I'm in the bard does that. He's quick to cast his high highest level spells and throws out bardic inspiration like candy. Then he laments he's out of spells and wants to rest after the second combat of the day. At the very least he says he's willing to keep going if the party wants and does so, but he makes sure we know he's out of juice. To his credit he is a team player. My only personal annoyance is his going nova the first combat of the day. There are times to go nova, when no matter what the party is taking a long rest after the battle. Misery loves company. I've got three team mates who reflexively do this. :smallcool:

[Asisreo1]

You'd best do that, as your opening post didn't and that has been the sustained critique brought up across six pages.

You could have an entire 1-20 campaign without a single combat, but 5e wouldn't be a particularly good ruleset for that game.

I'll do so, but hopefully you'll give my post the time and thought without dismissing it immediately because you don't like it. This is how it could have went:

When designing the game for the very first time, they wanted to bring back short rests and long rests from 3.5e, something many players enjoyed. So, they began making classes and gave all of them short and long rest resources. These classes being the Wizard, Rogue, Fighter, Bard, and Cleric. Monks, Warlocks, Barbarians, Sorcerers, Druids, Rangers, and Paladins most likely appear later.

They implemented the short rest resources by ear. There was obviously some math involved, but if they thought that a fighter's action surge should recover on a short rest, they did it. If it's off during playtesting, we'll align it.

Anyways, all of the classes currently available have short rest resources and long rest resources such that every character had a reason to short rest (Sneak attack dice were a short rest resource) as well as long rest. Rests worked differently early on. Long rests restored all HD, but they were interruptible like a short rest. A short rest was a couple of minutes but obviously didn't restore everything.

Looking good? Okay. Well, after playtesting, the players reported that interruptible long rests suck. The DM would just throw a single encounter before 8 hours expire and the group must restart with the same level of risk. So the devs removed the long rest interruptions. (this actually happened after monks and barbarians were added to the game).

Now, the playtesters see what they have, what they want, what they don't want. They want more variety in classes. All the bases are covered but they want spellcasters dependent and independent of certain rests. They want martials dependent and independent of certain rests. For the spellcasters, they made the Warlock and Sorcerer. For the martials, they made the monk and barbarian (and adjusted the rogue).

Now, you have these diverse classes with different types of resource recovery. Which formula do you use? The easiest way to do so is to collect the most likely amount of encounters a group will want to play and how many types of rests are typically allowed. So they did. They decided that most groups run 3-4 encounters with a single rest somewhere in-between. So they build the classes based on this, put it in the playtest packet, then collect data.

Majority of Groups hate it. Yes, it is a reasonable amount of encounters and rests, but nobody likes feeling like not structuring an adventure within such a specific guideline simply breaks the balance of the game. Suddenly the Sorcerer is much better than the Warlock because a DM can't fit 3-4 encounters every day or they never felt the need to take a rest. The playtesters caught this flaw, and so did the devs. So...the scrapped it. Threw it in an incinerator and tried again. This time, they swallowed their pride and listened rather than told the players how they should play.

So, they rebalanced with almost a haphazard system. There is no assumed ratio, the warlock just gets spell slots back on a short rest while a sorcerer never needs to. Then, they release it and listen. "The warlock is too weak! they don't get enough spell slots per short rest!" Give them 2 spell slots past level 2 rather than 1 the entirety of levels 1-10. "The sorcerer is too weak! they don't have enough resources over the course of the day!" Remove certain features from using SP and reduce the price of metamagic. "The warlock is too strong! They'll just go into a combat and immediately rest, giving them crazy spellcasting potential!" Okay, remove some spells from their list while making some spells into once-a-day invocations or Arcanum.

This back-and-forth continues, including the other classes. The groups may be playing with 1 encounter, 5 encounters, 8 encounters, or 10 encounters a day with 0, 2, 5, 7 short rests each day. That's fine, doesn't really matter. What matters is how those classes feel for the groups.

Not everyone can be happy and time is of the essence. Some groups are still dissatisfied but if the approval rating is roughly 80+%, it should be good for one more playtest then launch.

Where does 6-8 come from? The final playtest. They run one more round of playtesting and survey the groups on when they found they needed short rests and long rests. They found that if you're running 6-8 encounters, the party is likely to run out on-average. They also note most classes requesting a short rest roughly 1/3 and 2/3 of the way through. So, they make their adventuring day table and their guideline reflecting this in the encounter building section.

No need for a specific ratio of rests. At one point, there was, but the problems you express were caught during playtesting and the designers understood it was best to scrap it.


Jeremy had a dumb tweet two years ago. Is that the entire basis for this thread? Because he has more than one dumb tweet.
If Jeremy Crawford made a tweet about this topic, I am unaware. However, in my OP I addressed when he spoke about it on an interview which I linked.

[SiCK_Boy]

Tracking XP is already so freakin annoying though. We've been doing milestone leveling since our 3.path days just to avoid the absolute nuisance of tracking XP, which in 5e in particular is more fiddly than gold, arrows and encumbrance combined.

I think the best effort-to-results thing that WotC could have done, honestly, is just name the "gritty realism" rest variant something more accurate and less stupid - "wilderness resting"? "exploration resting"? "intrigue resting"? - as contrasted with the explicitly called out as "dungeon resting" default system, and put discussion of rest variants in the PHB as well as the DMG. That ankheg has obviously already left the warren but I can't believe how easy it would have been to cut this problem in half and they just didn't.

Agreed with you on the resting rules differing between wilderness/dungeon setting. I've been playing around with ways to make this work, but never pushed the reflexion so hard as to come up with a definitive way to handle it, especially aspects such as how to transition from one rest mode to another, who controls the rest mode in effect at any given time (can the players just decide to switch rest mode, or is it purely DM fiat, etc.), and how to explain this to the players (as a gameplay mechanism) as well as "in universe" (not sure if that is required; it could be handwaived just like long rest relation to injuries is handwaived in the base rules).

It still would not resolve the issue of class balance (class vs class) for those that are short rest dependant vs long rest dependant, but it would certainly help DMs manage narrative flow while still having the "resting" mechanism be an important part of the game for players to manage.

[cutlery]

Where does 6-8 come from? The final playtest. They run one more round of playtesting and survey the groups on when they found they needed short rests and long rests. They found that if you're running 6-8 encounters, the party is likely to run out on-average. They also note most classes requesting a short rest roughly 1/3 and 2/3 of the way through. So, they make their adventuring day table and their guideline reflecting this in the encounter building section.

No need for a specific ratio of rests. At one point, there was, but the problems you express were caught during playtesting and the designers understood it was best to scrap it.

If Jeremy Crawford made a tweet about this topic, I am unaware. However, in my OP I addressed when he spoke about it on an interview which I linked.


How else would they balance mostly short rest and mostly long rest classes but through playtesting?

And, if around 6-8 medium encounters with ~ 2 short rests is what they came up with after playtesting and they then codified it into the tables in the DMG, that sounds a lot like the system is designed around it. Ok, it wasn't a design feature they started with, it emerged later - but they decided to keep it. They left the SR and LR classes as-is and gave a guideline to the point where they felt about right.

One implication of the position "the game isn't balanced around 6-8 encounters and 2 short rests" is that the one encounter day as a regular thing is fine.

But, it isn't fine - as long rest casters will nova their little hearts out and short rest classes don't get much chance to have any spotlight.

Unless you'd argue that it's totally ok for a battlemaster to get 6 Sup die, two shots of indomitable and one action surge at 15 compared to a sorcerer's c43332111 spell slots and 15 sorcery points to tackle a one encounter day.

Regardless of whether or not 6-8 +2 was on the spec sheet from day one; the classes as we have them now are balanced around far more than one encounter per day as a regular thing.

Whether or not Crawford says this is fine, it isn't fine for the classes as written to habitually have only one combat encounter per day.

[Democratus]

Confirm it, yes, but that doesn't mean it was a good idea. Stress can come from there not being rules or having vague rules to encourage having rulings. Players want to play, not keep trying to figure out how to play.

I guess this is where I'm at a loss. Do DMs not feel like they are allowed to make rulings for some reason? Is there a basic shyness about this aspect of running a game?

Vague rules are an advantage. They let you make the game into whatever you like. This may cause problems with League play - but that's it's own entire messed-up thing. When at a private table (by far the most common way to play) there's nothing stopping you from playing however you like. 5e D&D gets out of the way and lets you do just this.

3e is great for those seeking a much more rules-explicit way of playing the game.

[Asisreo1]

How else would they balance mostly short rest and mostly long rest classes but through playtesting?

And, if around 6-8 medium encounters with ~ 2 short rests is what they came up with after playtesting and they then codified it into the tables in the DMG, that sounds a lot like the system is designed around it. Ok, it wasn't a design feature they started with, it emerged later - but they decided to keep it. They left the SR and LR classes as-is and gave a guideline to the point where they felt about right.

This is under the assumption that the game is balanced around losing all of your resources within a day every adventure day. But it doesn't have to be.

There's action economy, which is one of the most important aspects of balance, moreso than spell slots management.

Each character gets the same number of actions in a turn, barring a fighter, which only gets to stretch this once (or twice at higher levels). It doesn't matter how many spell slots a sorcerer has. If there's only 4 rounds of combat, they only get to expend 4 spell slots.

A game doesn't always need to stretch a party to 0 resources for the game to be balanced, a character can have as many resources as they want at the end of the day and still be balanced.



One implication of the position "the game isn't balanced around 6-8 encounters and 2 short rests" is that the one encounter day as a regular thing is fine.

But, it isn't fine - as long rest casters will nova their little hearts out and short rest classes don't get much chance to have any spotlight.
This is all theoretical and without context. A sorcerer at level 5 only has a maximum of 2 3rd-level spells known. These spells can be great spells like fireball and counterspell, but there isn't always a time and place to use them and they can't switch them out.

But even if they get a chance to NOVA, the short rest classes have plenty of NOVA potential. Stunning Strike spam is one of the ultimate NOVA strategies since it uses so much Ki to pull off. Warlocks not only get Arcanum which aligns with most spellcaster's upper level slots, they also have their own long rest dependent resources in the form of powerful invocations like Sculptor of Flesh that counts as a NOVA ability since it's limited by their long rest. In fact, all classes have the ability to NOVA, yes even the Rogue. Going NOVA doesn't mean using up all your resources. That's a part of it, but it mostly means having all your resources pointing to maximize damage for the combat. How does a Rogue do so? By dual-wielding within melee. A melee rogue does more damage than a ranged one (assuming no feats), plus they have a higher likelihood to activate sneak attack since they attack twice rather than once. The obvious tradeoff is that they're in an easily compromised position, melee, and their defenses, even with Uncanny Dodge and Evasion is shoddy since they have lower HD and armor. They don't get to run as easily since they used up their bonus action going NOVA rather than disengaging, which is how Action Economy gets you.


Regardless of whether or not 6-8 +2 was on the spec sheet from day one; the classes as we have them now are balanced around far more than one encounter per day as a regular thing.

Whether or not Crawford says this is fine, it isn't fine for the classes as written to habitually have only one combat encounter per day.
I've done one combat days where the Warlock or Sorcerer or Monk or Fighter were MVP. It's not impossible to have a single encounter day where every class gets a chance to shine. In fact, I could probably create a single-encounter day adventure balanced for whatever 4 classes of any rest variety you choose. Grant me 4 PC's, all stats unneeded but spells prepped or known would be helpful. I'll create an adventure where each party member will feel like they shine and not overshadowed by another due to the frequency of rests.

[cutlery]

A game doesn't always need to stretch a party to 0 resources for the game to be balanced, a character can have as many resources as they want at the end of the day and still be balanced.


Are you arguing the game as it is, is balanced for one five round combat per LR?

Because that's what it would take for resource balancing and a regular diet of encounters and short rests to not be required.



This is all theoretical and without context. A sorcerer at level 5 only has a maximum of 2 3rd-level spells known. These spells can be great spells like fireball and counterspell, but there isn't always a time and place to use them and they can't switch them out.


That's the only sort of example we can have in a forum such as this.

If resource attrition isn't important to the game and is, as you are arguing here, completely optional, is a combat where a wizard or sorcerer casts one 9th, one 8th, and one 7th level spell and a barbarian or a fighter or a rogue gets three rounds to do whatever they like balanced?

I don't see anyone other than another full caster being able to claim any spotlight in such a scenario; which is particularly bad for the fighter since fighting things is their raison d'être.

If the short/long rest thing and the resource attrition thing weren't part of the equation, a three round or a thirty round combat wouldn't change things. Nor would one thirty round combat vs six 5 round combats spread across the day.




I've done one combat days where the Warlock or Sorcerer or Monk or Fighter were MVP. It's not impossible to have a single encounter day where every class gets a chance to shine. In fact, I could probably create a single-encounter day adventure balanced for whatever 4 classes of any rest variety you choose.


Wizard, Cleric, Sorcerer, Fighter.

If those full casters can't easily eclipse the fighter with 7th, 8th, and 9th level spells on tap, they aren't trying, unless you are regularly reaching for antimagic fields - and if you have to do that every time you want the fighter to have some fun, the players will certainly notice and it will feel like a pity encounter.

If you don't want to run long adventure days - don't. But just because you may prefer not to isn't sufficient reason to argue that the system isn't built with resource attrition in mind.

And resource attrition is exactly what the long adventure day is about.

[Benny89]

I agree and disagree with this Post at the same time.

As DM I found out that trying to force 6-8 encounters (or 4 deadly or whatever) to drain resources is just stupid. It's not natural, it does not always fit story, does not always fit in what I want to show, what experience I want players to get etc. In short- any rule of "minimum/maximum encounters" is just stupid.

On the other hand the out-of-date Spell Slot system that DnD have sadly forces me to somehow always try to fit encounters more than sometimes I wished to because I know that if I won't do it - some epic fights I planed will be short and one-sided.

I don't have solution to it. I try to play naturally - sometimes it's 2-3 encounters per long rest, sometimes it's 1, sometimes it's 5-8 if it's dungeon/siege/war etc. There is no rule to make it work and make it good. You need to have a good flow.|

Good example is Curse of Stradh campaign. Somtimes you have 1-2 encounters per long rest (like Baba Lysaga). Sometimes 2 (like big wooden statue + barbarians). Sometimes 4-7 (Temple). Sometimes even 8+ (Castle if trying to explore everything) and then back to 1-3 (Wizard of Wines). Somtimes it was supposed to be 6, but players play smart with scouting, stealth, Divination spells etc. and make it 2, because they skip a lot of them, using brain and tactics. Which is much better than just "open door, yet another encounter behind" scenarios.

And I never felt like Short Rest classes were weaker than long rest ones even if there is 1 encounter. From my experience a good designed encounter (that stays exciting and doesn't drag like old hag at some points) should end in 3-4 turns max. Which gives everyone enough time to have fun with their class. A lot also depends from playing smart or stupid from party (wasting Fireball on 5 goblins and Hasting Paladin vs some mooks).

I only wish that in future DnD will finally give up that Spell Slots + Long Rest system and switch to something more like Mana/Action Points/Successes rolled etc. Somethng that is designed to work in every encounter and doesn't force DM to count how much he need to "drain" but just design encounter to be when they needs to be, not looking at hours passed or days.

[KorvinStarmast]

I only wish that in future DnD will finally give up that Spell Slots + Long Rest system and switch to something more like Mana/Action Points/Successes rolled etc. Somethng that is designed to work in every encounter and doesn't force DM to count how much he need to "drain" but just design encounter to be when they needs to be, not looking at hours passed or days. 13th age has an adaption like that.

[Pex]

I guess this is where I'm at a loss. Do DMs not feel like they are allowed to make rulings for some reason? Is there a basic shyness about this aspect of running a game?

Vague rules are an advantage. They let you make the game into whatever you like. This may cause problems with League play - but that's it's own entire messed-up thing. When at a private table (by far the most common way to play) there's nothing stopping you from playing however you like. 5e D&D gets out of the way and lets you do just this.

3e is great for those seeking a much more rules-explicit way of playing the game.

It becomes a problem when you play more than one game with different DMs. (To the peanut gallery I do not mean skill use specifically.) It becomes a bother when you can do one thing in one game but not another. For example, I have never been able to play a wizard who can use his owl familiar do the Help action so a player can have advantage. I've played in many campaigns where this is allowed, but my rotten luck the two games I played a wizard that was the DM who interpreted the rules to say no you can't do that. It makes a difference where one DM rules a paladin can't use two weapon style on smites but another DM says you can, Sage Advice being irrelevant in both cases. One should not have to ask the DM what rules are we using this time every time you start a new game. Less experienced players won't even know what rules to ask about until it's too late. I learned the hard way both times being nixed on my owl familiar strategy.

[noob]

I only wish that in future DnD will finally give up that Spell Slots + Long Rest system and switch to something more like Mana/Action Points/Successes rolled etc. Somethng that is designed to work in every encounter and doesn't force DM to count how much he need to "drain" but just design encounter to be when they needs to be, not looking at hours passed or days.
There is so many systems that are close to dnd that do not have vancian spellcasting.
Just get one of them.
They have no reasons to replace those parts of dnd: dnd 4e did remove spell slots and ressource management differentiation(all the classes uses the same resource use scheme) and it did cause so many people to scream that it is silly to expect them to repeat the same actions that caused bad consequences(in their pov).
Do not use the term "finally give up spell slots" it is false for the reason they already gave up on spell slots(dnd 4e) therefore they can not "finally give up" on something they already gave up once.

[Sol0botmate]

There is so many systems that are close to dnd that do not have vancian spellcasting.
Just get one of them.
They have no reasons to replace those parts of dnd: dnd 4e did remove spell slots and ressource management differentiation(all the classes uses the same resource use scheme) and it did cause so many people to scream that it is silly to expect them to repeat the same actions that caused bad consequences(in their pov).
Do not use the term "finally give up spell slots" it is false for the reason they already gave up on spell slots(dnd 4e) therefore they can not "finally give up" on something they already gave up once.

4e was a failure because of other reasons and generally 4e made too many drastic changes. 5e takes things slowly.

Look at new Tasha Lineage book coming- we are finally getting rid off static racial bonuses. We already got alt.rule for Spell Points (de facto mana), though they still work with their rest mechanics.

And yes there are other systems but I want to play DnD (setting) - We don't have much choice, don't we.

I would also like them to make their spell system more modern and we have many editions ahead of us. Anything can happen.

[noob]

4r was a failure because of other reasons and generally 4e made too many drastic changes. 5e takes thing slowly.

Look at new Tasha Lineage book coming- we are finally getting rid off static racial bonuses. We already got alt.rule for Spell Points (de facto mana), though they still work with their rest mechanics.

E

And yes there are other systems but I want to play DnD (setting) - We don't have much choice

You can pick a dnd setting and cram it in another system with nearly no problems and it can even be faster to run when using systems that are lightweight.
System != setting.

[Sol0botmate]

You can pick a dnd setting and cram it in another system with nearly no problems and it can even be faster to run when using systems that are lightweight.
System != setting.

Absolutely not. Changing whole spell mechanic/rest would require changes to spell themselves (like damage if they can be used more often), monsters and even saving attributes (attributes in general) which are different in other systems.

DnD is absolutely not friendly to different mechanic from other system, mostly due to having hundreds of spells that are specifically tailored for specific mechanic.

[cutlery]

On the other hand the out-of-date Spell Slot system that DnD have sadly forces me to somehow always try to fit encounters more than sometimes I wished to because I know that if I won't do it - some epic fights I planed will be short and one-sided.


They tried that in 4e, and apparently people hated it.

Spell points are around if you can convince your table; Warlocks need some fixing in that case.


The leveled spells (with or without spell points) are something they're stuck with in the system; the fact that, for the most part the spells of a given level are more powerful than an upcast lower level spell is part of it; and it would require mostly all new spells to get away from that. That's one of the more identifiable features of the system, though, so I don't think it would be a good idea from a marketing perspective.


When those higher leveled spells are around, on shorter days you have full casters letting loose their big guns all the time - especially when they have come to expect a short adventure day, and it ends like this (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0145.html).

If the full casters have no reason or expectation to conserve, they won't. If they don't and their top 3 or so levels of spells are all it takes to win the encounter; others look rather weak; and the casters still have a ton of spells for all sorts of investigation and social stuff, too. Fighters have a stick, and sometimes intimidate.

[noob]

Absolutely not. Changing whole spell mechanic/rest would require changes to spell themselves (like damage if they can be used more often), monsters and even saving attributes (attributes in general) which are different in other systems.

DnD is absolutely not friendly to different mechanic from other system, mostly due to having hundreds of spells that are specifically tailored for specific mechanic.

Spell damages and so on are not part of the setting at all.
Imagine you use mutants and masterminds to play in a dnd setting.
You would not have the same damages but you could still say "and wizard X participated in battlefield Z with spell Y" it does not actually matters much whenever the spell dealt damage(dnd way) or weakened opponents until they fail a toughness roll(mutants and masterminds way of managing harm) all you had to do is add the spell as the damage power with the appropriate descriptors(like fire because it was fireball for example) to the wizard X and it is qualitatively the same: a damaging ability that uses T to harm.
If using a more generic system you might even just have stuff like a "deal harm" descriptor be re-fluffed as all the damage spells and also people swinging a weapon.
The specific stats of the spells at not important to what happened in the past unless you want to start doing an exact simulation of the past which nobody sane does.
You are confusing system and mechanics with the setting.
A setting is a set of things and people and histories and locations in which players and gms can decide to delve.
The rules is the specific way things works in a given system.
A system is a way to interact with settings.
You can just take all the locations and characters and histories and use them with a different system without any problem.
(unless taking a system meant for very specific kinds of interactions that are not the ones that are likely to happen in the setting instead of picking one of the generic systems that exists or picking mutants and masterminds for playing dnd (mutants and masterminds is a system for superheroes which is what dnd characters mostly are))

If you want specifically guidelines on how to make characters that are similar to dnd ones in mutants and masterminds you can browse for grod adaptation of dnd classes(by turning them into a set of powers assemblies that are thematical for the class to pick) to mutants and masterminds(which is classless and where players builds their own powers by assembling them and assembling descriptors)

[KorvinStarmast]

I guess this is where I'm at a loss. Do DMs not feel like they are allowed to make rulings for some reason? Is there a basic shyness about this aspect of running a game? No, but there are some parti cipants on this board who can't seem to let go and trust their DM.


One should not have to ask the DM what rules are we using this time every time you start a new game. I don't find that to be true, and never haver.
We did that for years - how does your dungeon/world work? - when the game started; every table had a certian amount of home brew, and the game thrived. Actually having a dialogue with the DM on how their world works is healthy. I went through this with shield master with one DM, and we had a healthy dialogue. I didn't like the final decision (he swapped when Crawford waffled) but we talked about it and I adapted to the new truth of the world. Nothing hard about that. My brother has a few personal taste things and doesn't like the 'super advantage of Lucky when one is at disadvantage' so he has his own scheme.

This isn't a video game with a single pile of code, and it isn't chess.

For league play, though, or for convention play, standardization is certainly a reasonable aim.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Not everyone knows everything about the book, but it feels like a disservice to automatically assume that they don't know what they were trying to say because it doesn't match your assumptions about what it should say.

It's basically thinking "Yeah, they said vegetables are good for you, but there's no way they all agree on that. There's too many dietitians to be unanimous. Plus, they might have meant fruit, not veggies. Therefore, they should say veggies are not good for you but fruit might be."

It's questioning the experts based on conjecture. That type of logic is inadmissible for proof.
That's...not the point? My point isn't that they didn't know what they were trying to say, but that:

A. There was no one thing "they" were trying to say, because they were distinctly plural; and
B. They have incentive not to tell the truth about their intent.

This is not conjecture. We have proof that multiple people worked on D&D, and that they were not a hive mind. (Well, technically we don't have proof of the latter, but the burden of proof ain't on me.) We also have proof of the latter on any D&D community.


And here's the problem. Anyone can say anything is anything based on assumptions that they want to make. Whether anyone thinks the assumptions should be the case or not is irrelevant. It's fat that should be skimmed.

From the very beginning, assumption #1, I have a problem. It's not that I don't think it should be true. It's true in many cases. But is it based on text or just what you imagine a TTRPG ought to be? It's why I want you to put your assumptions to rest and work with only what you have.
...what? It's based on text. It's based on spell slots, hit dice, action surges, resource pools, item charges, and all the other resources a player needs to consider whether and when to use. I thought you might contest some of the assumptions, but not "D&D has important resources you need to manage"!


My goal is not to bring my own assumption, but to make it clear of which assumptions are safe to make and which are not.
"I'm not going to tell you anything I believe, I'm just going to say what you believe is wrong!"
Also, gods above and below, you're so presumptuous. "I'm going to tell you which assumptions are OK to make and which are not."


But, in plain english, that is not what it's saying. If I told you:

"Assuming a typically sunny day over the course of a full playground visit, a child will likely need a nap after 4 hours of play."

Are you going to say, in earnest, that a child is required to visit a playground for 4 hours every sunny day if you want them to get maximum exercise?

I wouldn't, because that's not what it's saying.
...so, you're saying that anyone who thinks that 5e is balanced around a 6-8 encounter, two short-rest day believes that D&D literally cannot be played any other way? Because nobody believes that.


Yes, they playtested more than one encounter days. They probably playtested up to 10 encounter days too. The point is that one-encounter days were definitely included in their playtesting and it was fine to the playtesters and designers based on the data they collected.
...that doesn't actually address any point I made?


But I'm saying that what they say is what they say. Others are trying to find meaning between the lines when the ink is visible.
Given your child-on-the-playground analogy, I think you're pretty bad at reading the meaning on the lines.

Beyond that, this is in the book. You're interpreting the DMG text as much as any of us, just in a different way.


No. I've playtested the warlock and sorcerer myself plenty of times, and they've been playtested officially.

However, there was only two times I even shown numbers, and that's spell slot counts and EB-AB damage compared to CO. Afterwards, it gets non-numerical. You can't really process the difference between evard's black tentacles and twin polymorph into a calculator but they're both unique to each of the characters.
Your analysis kept mentioning numbers. How many spell slots they had access to throughout the day, what levels they were, how much damage they could do with a cantrip, etc. Those were the only things you actually analyzed—everything else was just kind of listed.


But it's literally the playtest-approved version of the warlock. People have actually played it and thought it was well-balanced. My own players and I think warlocks are well-balanced after playing them.
...yes? And?
Wait, are you saying that because the process you described might have resulted in the warlock, the warlock is proof that that process works?!?


No, they aren't. It takes playtesting, which the designers did. Assymetric balance is never perfect, there's a tolerance, but it can still be relatively balanced.
Um, yes? My point was that the logic you used to demonstrate the balance in your example was flawed, and that your abstract (almost mathematical) analysis wasn't worth the paper it was printed on.


Pawns are balanced to rooks in chess. Unsure if you're aware but pawns are easily discarded. They're just as useful as a rook since without the pawns, there'd be no easy defense for your king nor any easy piece to put pressure on larger pieces like queens, bishops, and knights. They also get to turn into powerful pieces themselves.
Pawns are only useful for defense because you get eight of them, and they're easily discarded because they're so use-impaired. They can turn into useful pieces later, but only if your opponent lets them all the way to their back line.
Rooks, by contrast, are useful immediately. They're used to bring your king to a more defensible position, and their ability to threaten across the board is rivaled only by queens.


It's almost like I predicted this type of behavior in my OP. That people would want to make me sound like a fool while I'm doing my best to help DM's out of their slump about an imagined barrier between balance and adventure design. A barrier that has been placed based on assumptions on what their TTRPG should be in their minds rather than what the designers have said officially and in the rulebooks.
This isn't an argument. This is putting me in a box so you can ignore me.


I do think resource management is an important part of the game, but I have a problem using this as evidence for any sort of conclusion because it's an assumption.

If I assume that you've never played 5e based on what you've replied, it would make an argument much easier that you don't have a complete grasp on balance(which is not an argument I'm making). But I can't work on that assumption because it's still just an assumption.

The game doesn't say resource management is important. We can't just take that for granted merely because we think it's how it should be.
We don't have to. We have empirical evidence that resource management is important to 5e, because the books include so many resources and rules for managing them. By contrast, you don't have empirical evidence that cutlery hasn't played 5e.
Not all assumptions are made equal.



(A) I've heard people say this but I don't understand it. Do they realize that long rest is only allowed every every 24 hours? If you fight off a bandit attack on the road at 10 am, I can totally see why you might pause for an hour to bandage wounds, go through the bandit's possessions, meditate and regain ki, stretch out your muscles (Action Surge), refresh your spells/wildshapes, etc. But would you really give up completely on all of your plans for that day and sit there doing NOTHING for the next 22 hours or so, until you finish a long rest, right there on the road where you killed the bandits? Does that kind of thing really happen at other peoples' tables?
Speaking as one of the people who says (and experiences) this: No.

First off, note the "or skip it" part of cutlery's post.
In your example, the party would probably just get back on the road. A whole hour is a long time to rest, after all! Imagine you were taking a multi-day drive across the continent to visit a relative or something and you stopped for a while hour. Not for any particular reason, mind; something came up, you wanted to get your mind off it, and you decided an hour was a decent length of time to just sit still for. I'm glad I've never taken a road trip with that kind of person—we'd never get anywhere on time!
So yeah, the "or just skip it" is an important part of that mindset.

Second off, consider the circumstances when short rests are most important—in the middle of a dungeon or dungeon-like environment (such as an orc-held castle or astral ruins or something). This is the place where the 6-8 encounter, two short rest schedule can exist! But consider...if you're in such a hostile environment, why would you stop in there and rest? It's a hostile environment, and giving the enemy an hour to react and prepare means they're able to more effectively react—or even set up traps! Leaving the dungeon to rest prevents the first problem but makes the second worse, because now you potentially need to fight through the rooms you cleared out the first time.
It can sometimes make sense in a passive dungeon environment, but in my experience most adventures don't have those. They have enemy fortresses containing specific objectives within, and it feels wrong to take an hour-long time-out in the middle of the operation.

(Anecdote: Once, our then-DM ran an adventure the DM thought was too short to need a short rest. We needed to rescue a kid from some cultists' ritual, and could hear the chanting from outside. The players lost the first encounter badly enough that they decided they had to ignore common sense and take a short rest, or else they'd die. You might have guessed the outcome from the fact that I'm mentioning the anecdote, but...we didn't save the kid.)

Finally, no, they don't try to long-rest multiple times within 24 hours. They just adventure from, I dunno, 10 AM to 1 PM, make camp somewhere safe/return to town, and come back at 10 AM the next day. Sometimes they do something useful like gathering supplies or buying information; sometimes they do something fun and roleplay-ey; sometimes we just chat (in and/or out of character) while the DM figures out what changes overnight.

[Sorinth]

I don't have solution to it. I try to play naturally - sometimes it's 2-3 encounters per long rest, sometimes it's 1, sometimes it's 5-8 if it's dungeon/siege/war etc. There is no rule to make it work and make it good. You need to have a good flow.

Good example is Curse of Stradh campaign. Somtimes you have 1-2 encounters per long rest (like Baba Lysaga). Sometimes 2 (like big wooden statue + barbarians). Sometimes 4-7 (Temple). Sometimes even 8+ (Castle if trying to explore everything) and then back to 1-3 (Wizard of Wines). Somtimes it was supposed to be 6, but players play smart with scouting, stealth, Divination spells etc. and make it 2, because they skip a lot of them, using brain and tactics. Which is much better than just "open door, yet another encounter behind" scenarios.

Having that variety of adventuring day is the solution. It's both natural to have adventuring days be wildly different and actually helps shine the spotlight on different players since different characters will handle those day better or worse. Also since the players don't know in advance how many encounters they have/how much resting they'll have that day, they are "forced" to play as if there are more.

As for smart play skipping encounters, that's not true. They aren't skipping encounters, skill check based encounters are still encounters, spending spell slots to avoid a fight is still an encounter and still drained party resources.

[SiCK_Boy]

The main issue with the 1 encounter day is not when it exists in and of itself, it is when is exists and the players are aware of it. If players still fear that another encounter could crop up after this one, they may decide to hold back on some resources. If they know for a fact, either because the DM told them (for example, the DM makes it clear he only performs one random encounter check per traveling day in the wilderness), or because they can control the pace (they know that if they call a long rest, the DM will never send another encounter at them; or they know they can retreat to a safe place anytime and wait 24 hours).

[KorvinStarmast]

For what it's worth, 13th Age has chose the "4 encounters and then a heal up" as its base model, though I think that's a "plus or minus one" deal based on the notes in the book. Not weirdly, that's close to the number of encounters I usually have in 5e for an adventure day, 3 or 4, except when the party is traveling.
The encounters tend to be aimed at "hard to deadly" so that each one has risks/tension in it. Some encounters are well above that though, and the party often has to figure out the "live to fight another day" decisions now and again.

That approach reduces DM work, but a particular difference between that and the notional adventure day (6-8 in the medium zone) is that I have less trouble with linking the narrative with the encounters when I have fewer of them. A prefab dungeon like Sunless Citadel or Forge of Fury offers a dialable menu of "as much as you want to bite off today" with consequences for making too much noise or pressing on at just the wrong time/place.

[Democratus]

It becomes a problem when you play more than one game with different DMs. (To the peanut gallery I do not mean skill use specifically.) It becomes a bother when you can do one thing in one game but not another. For example, I have never been able to play a wizard who can use his owl familiar do the Help action so a player can have advantage. I've played in many campaigns where this is allowed, but my rotten luck the two games I played a wizard that was the DM who interpreted the rules to say no you can't do that. It makes a difference where one DM rules a paladin can't use two weapon style on smites but another DM says you can, Sage Advice being irrelevant in both cases. One should not have to ask the DM what rules are we using this time every time you start a new game. Less experienced players won't even know what rules to ask about until it's too late. I learned the hard way both times being nixed on my owl familiar strategy.

Sorry that happened to you.

It nearly always boils down to "are the DM and player compatible?".

A loose system like 5e can let good players (including DM) shine by getting out of the way. It can also result in players having serious issues due to a lack of guidance.

I prefer to have the space allowed by a "rulings, not rules" system and its often ambiguous rules. You seem to prefer more concrete rule systems to prevent inconsistent experiences from table to table.

I can totally dig that. Please don't think that when I disagree with you on some point here or there that I think your preferences are less valid. :smallcool:

[GreatWyrmGold]

Oh hey, new page.



I'll do so, but hopefully you'll give my post the time and thought without dismissing it immediately because you don't like it. This is how it could have went:

When designing the game for the very first time, they wanted to bring back short rests and long rests from 3.5e, something many players enjoyed.
Yeah, um, if I was gonna immediately dismiss your post, it would be over something like this. Not only did 3.5 not have short and long rests, it had NOTHING comparable to short rests (except arguably the Tome of Battle classes late in its run).


-assertions about how short and long rests abilities were initially assigned-
Okay, there are three other reasons I could dismiss your post by this point.
One: You seem to think that constructing a scenario out of nothing is somehow a compelling argument when you do it, when you refuse to accept an argument from someone else because it assumes that resource management is important in D&D.
Two: You treat the game design process as a fundamentally casual, arbitrary process, which doesn't seem terribly respectful towards the professionals who designed it. Hell, I put more thought than that into the homebrew class I threw together in a few weeks for a contest!
Finally: You think the only reason someone would dismiss this argument immediately is because they disagree with it.


Okay. Well, after playtesting... -snip-
Look, this is an interesting history, and some of it even sounds plausible. But it's all godsdang irrelevant! This is another reason to dismiss your post that has nothing to do with disagreeing with it, incidentally; after all, it's hard to disagree with something if you can't be bothered to read through all the faff and see what the conclusion is.


Where does 6-8 come from? The final playtest. They run one more round of playtesting and survey the groups on when they found they needed short rests and long rests. They found that if you're running 6-8 encounters, the party is likely to run out on-average. They also note most classes requesting a short rest roughly 1/3 and 2/3 of the way through. So, they make their adventuring day table and their guideline reflecting this in the encounter building section.

No need for a specific ratio of rests. At one point, there was, but the problems you express were caught during playtesting and the designers understood it was best to scrap it.
...What?

Your winding argument about a way that D&D could have been designed without having a specific schedule is, instead, an argument about how they designed their schedule? And you have the audacity to say that there isn't a specific ratio of rests right after you describe the ratio of rests?
See, this is perhaps the biggest reason to dismiss your entire argument. You seem unaware of and uninterested in the implications of what you say, only whether they sound like they support the thesis you already decided on. In arguing that there wasn't a designed "schedule" for the adventuring day, you constructed a scenario where a schedule for the adventuring day was designed.

People arguing against you, on the whole, don't care much about which came first. What they care about is that D&D is balanced around a specific schedule. Whether the balance was intended from the beginning of development or discovered at the end doesn't really matter!


This is under the assumption that the game is balanced around losing all of your resources within a day every adventure day. But it doesn't have to be.
No, but most players will try to get the most out of their resources. If a player knows they only experience one (or a few) encounters in a day, they will be free to spend all (or a significant fraction of) their resources in every fight. (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0145.html)

You're completely ignoring the role of player agency in game balance, which might be the single biggest mistake I've seen you make so far.


There's action economy, which is one of the most important aspects of balance, moreso than spell slots management.
I disagree for two reasons.
One: In my experience, spells (and other resources) vastly expand what your character can do. With spells, my cleric is calling down battle-reshaping miracles potentially every turn; without, he's just throwing sacred flame in the general directions of whatever enemies look to have the worst Dexterity saves. This only grows more obvious as levels increase and the impact of a single massive resource expenditure grows.
Two: The importance of the action economy does not diminish the importance of resource management. The two complement each other rather than overlapping.


Each character gets the same number of actions in a turn, barring a fighter, which only gets to stretch this once (or twice at higher levels). It doesn't matter how many spell slots a sorcerer has. If there's only 4 rounds of combat, they only get to expend 4 spell slots.
Just one spell slot is usually more impactful than four rounds of anything an equivalently-leveled character can do without spending resources, which grows more obvious the higher level you are but is true as soon as the casters get entangle or sleep.


-stuff about how short rest classes can nova too-
-anecdotal evidence about short-rest classes sometimes being cool-
None of this is actually an argument, which is the best reason to dismiss an argument.


There is so many systems that are close to dnd that do not have vancian spellcasting.
Just get one of them.
This argument functions basically the same as "If you don't like [policy], why don't you move to [place which allegedly doesn't have that policy]?" It's trying to shut down discussion by saying that the solution is not to improve any problems within a given system, but for anyone who cares about that problem to abandon that system. And like that political argument, it's deeply flawed, and for many of the same reasons. For instance:
There are things someone might like about the system they're currently working in which aren't present in the alternative.
The "complainers" may be bound to their current system by social ties and obligations. In my experience, it's pretty tough to get your group to learn and play a new game.
The other system might simply not be as available to the complainers as you'd like...which admittedly is more true in the politics example...
The problem exists regardless of if anyone is there to point it out.



The main issue with the 1 encounter day is not when it exists in and of itself, it is when is exists and the players are aware of it. If players still fear that another encounter could crop up after this one, they may decide to hold back on some resources. If they know for a fact, either because the DM told them (for example, the DM makes it clear he only performs one random encounter check per traveling day in the wilderness), or because they can control the pace (they know that if they call a long rest, the DM will never send another encounter at them; or they know they can retreat to a safe place anytime and wait 24 hours).
Concealing that from the players is easier said than done. Unless you're running an adventure where any random town or stretch of road could conceal another 5-7 encounters before bedtime, players will have a pretty good idea of how few encounters they're likely to face in a typical day outside a dungeon.

[noob]

Oh hey, new page.



Yeah, um, if I was gonna immediately dismiss your post, it would be over something like this. Not only did 3.5 not have short and long rests, it had NOTHING comparable to short rests (except arguably the Tome of Battle classes late in its run).


Okay, there are three other reasons I could dismiss your post by this point.
One: You seem to think that constructing a scenario out of nothing is somehow a compelling argument when you do it, when you refuse to accept an argument from someone else because it assumes that resource management is important in D&D.
Two: You treat the game design process as a fundamentally casual, arbitrary process, which doesn't seem terribly respectful towards the professionals who designed it. Hell, I put more thought than that into the homebrew class I threw together in a few weeks for a contest!
Finally: You think the only reason someone would dismiss this argument immediately is because they disagree with it.


Look, this is an interesting history, and some of it even sounds plausible. But it's all godsdang irrelevant! This is another reason to dismiss your post that has nothing to do with disagreeing with it, incidentally; after all, it's hard to disagree with something if you can't be bothered to read through all the faff and see what the conclusion is.


...What?

Your winding argument about a way that D&D could have been designed without having a specific schedule is, instead, an argument about how they designed their schedule? And you have the audacity to say that there isn't a specific ratio of rests right after you describe the ratio of rests?
See, this is perhaps the biggest reason to dismiss your entire argument. You seem unaware of and uninterested in the implications of what you say, only whether they sound like they support the thesis you already decided on. In arguing that there wasn't a designed "schedule" for the adventuring day, you constructed a scenario where a schedule for the adventuring day was designed.

People arguing against you, on the whole, don't care much about which came first. What they care about is that D&D is balanced around a specific schedule. Whether the balance was intended from the beginning of development or discovered at the end doesn't really matter!


No, but most players will try to get the most out of their resources. If a player knows they only experience one (or a few) encounters in a day, they will be free to spend all (or a significant fraction of) their resources in every fight. (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0145.html)

You're completely ignoring the role of player agency in game balance, which might be the single biggest mistake I've seen you make so far.


I disagree for two reasons.
One: In my experience, spells (and other resources) vastly expand what your character can do. With spells, my cleric is calling down battle-reshaping miracles potentially every turn; without, he's just throwing sacred flame in the general directions of whatever enemies look to have the worst Dexterity saves. This only grows more obvious as levels increase and the impact of a single massive resource expenditure grows.
Two: The importance of the action economy does not diminish the importance of resource management. The two complement each other rather than overlapping.


Just one spell slot is usually more impactful than four rounds of anything an equivalently-leveled character can do without spending resources, which grows more obvious the higher level you are but is true as soon as the casters get entangle or sleep.


None of this is actually an argument, which is the best reason to dismiss an argument.


This argument functions basically the same as "If you don't like [policy], why don't you move to [place which allegedly doesn't have that policy]?" It's trying to shut down discussion by saying that the solution is not to improve any problems within a given system, but for anyone who cares about that problem to abandon that system. And like that political argument, it's deeply flawed, and for many of the same reasons. For instance:
There are things someone might like about the system they're currently working in which aren't present in the alternative.
The "complainers" may be bound to their current system by social ties and obligations. In my experience, it's pretty tough to get your group to learn and play a new game.
The other system might simply not be as available to the complainers as you'd like...which admittedly is more true in the politics example...
The problem exists regardless of if anyone is there to point it out.



Concealing that from the players is easier said than done. Unless you're running an adventure where any random town or stretch of road could conceal another 5-7 encounters before bedtime, players will have a pretty good idea of how few encounters they're likely to face in a typical day outside a dungeon.

Except they were not asking for an improvement to dnd but a change that is neither an improvement nor a downgrade but making it be a different system guaranteed to anger many dnd players.
It is more akin to saying "I dislike my government and I think there should be a revolution in my government just so it fits more my preference instead of me moving to a neighbouring government that fits better my preferences"
No they can not make the creator of the game change the game since the creator already had bad experiences specifically about changing what this player wanted to change. They should instead either make their own changes at their table or pick up another game.

Some people just like a resource management game and plays dnd should they be made unhappy so that the players that prefers not having resource management game and somehow plays dnd and does not want to do the changes at their own table are happier?
There is no point into that unless those who dislikes resource management and for some reason are physically unable to switch to another system are an overwhelming majority.
Even then it is a bad move for the company because the players which disliked resource management were already playing the game for some reason and they were likely to stay because of "being unable to play another game" so financially it is a bad idea to decide to cater to them and potentially lose players they already had(those who liked resource management).

A company role is not maximising the happiness of a random player nor maximising the average happiness of the players but just to gain as much money as possible.
So those who complains about the main roots of the system the developers made are not bringing anything unless they prove that more new people would come if they changed the thing than the number of lost players.
So by saying your personal opinion as someone who plays dnd about what the company should do to please you then you are bringing information that does not interest the company since you are already a client even if it is because you are forced at gun point to play a game with traits you do not want.

[SiCK_Boy]

A company role is not maximising the happiness of a random player nor maximising the average happiness of the players but just to gain as much money as possible.
So those who complains about the main roots of the system the developers made are not bringing anything unless they prove that more new people would come if they changed the thing than the number of lost players.
So by saying your personal opinion as someone who plays dnd about what the company should do to please you then you are bringing information that does not interest the company since you are already a client even if it is because you are forced at gun point to play a game with traits you do not want.

So your argument is that there is no point in anyone outside of WotC having discussions about system design decisions unless you can bribe WotC with lots of players / money?

Why even bother participating in a forum if that is how you see things?

Except for the OP adopting a very sanctimonious / definitive tone in his initial post (and he did bring a lot more nuance to his arguments as he responded to various posts further down the thread), most of what people have been posting in this thread relate to how they perceive some aspects of the game (and its design foundations) as problematic or not, with some trying to suggest solutions that individual DMs can incorporate in their games to diminish the impact of those problems.

I do not have the perfect system or solution, within the D&D 5e framework, to try to achieve great balance between classes while having meaningful and challenging encounters for the party at all / most times (dungeon vs wilderness, 5 minutes work day).

Hearing various perspectives on the topic is still interesting and encourages people to further think about it from different angles (ex: OP’s references to how the initial classes were balanced through playtesting will have me dig back into those rules packages that were distributed over the D&D Next period, as I was not an active player at that time).

We may have finished covering all the ground there is to cover on this topic, but for my part, I’m all for continuing to hear more thoughts on this topic.

[Pex]

No, but there are some parti cipants on this board who can't seem to let go and trust their DM.

I don't find that to be true, and never haver.
We did that for years - how does your dungeon/world work? - when the game started; every table had a certian amount of home brew, and the game thrived. Actually having a dialogue with the DM on how their world works is healthy. I went through this with shield master with one DM, and we had a healthy dialogue. I didn't like the final decision (he swapped when Crawford waffled) but we talked about it and I adapted to the new truth of the world. Nothing hard about that. My brother has a few personal taste things and doesn't like the 'super advantage of Lucky when one is at disadvantage' so he has his own scheme.

This isn't a video game with a single pile of code, and it isn't chess.

For league play, though, or for convention play, standardization is certainly a reasonable aim.

You talk with the DM about the game world. He brings up any house rules he wants to use. Unless you're a newb you don't inquire about the fundamentals of playing the game. It's supposed to be understood when you say "I'm playing a wizard" "I'm playing a paladin" that everyone knows what you're talking about and how it works. The rules of the game should be static. What's different is the adventures, how the various rules are combined together to play. Analogy: Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti are the notes everyone uses, in simplistic terms. How they are put together gives you Happy Birthday to Copacabana to Another One Bights The Dust to We're Not Gonna Take It.

[KorvinStarmast]

It's supposed to be understood when you say "I'm playing a wizard" "I'm playing a paladin" that everyone knows what you're talking about and how it works.
No, that is not correct. For a paladin, you don't even take your oath until level 3.
You have read the rules. They are not rules light. The idea is to be able to start and learn as you go.

The game is built to make the ongoing game a journey for each player to grow with and figure out their character as they level up. Most subclasses don't even come on line, nor begin to establish their core features, until Level 3.
(Clerics being a notable exception, and as I've observed some newbies struggle with them, a reasonably high skill coefficient class as are all full casters).
That is part of the "low barrier to entry for newbies" bit that is part of this edition's DNA.
You are supposed to learn as you go in this game. That's how it is built.
(See also the discussion on tiers of play).

Front loading 'builds' is what the small percentage of 'game mastery players' (in which case I must place myself since I like to participate here at GiTP) demand.

The rules of the game should be static.
They mostly are; you are carping about exceptions.

The DM and the players discover together how this or that spell works, and most of the time the rules aren't that hard to figure out.

Let me tell you this: our group has been playing this game since 2014, the group my brother and I co DM in. (Our original DM got defeated by RL). The players, for the most part, are still discovering how various spells and powers work, and I coach them sometimes - since it interests me, but I always defer to the DM (my brother) when he's running it. And he shows me the same courtesy. My nephew DMs for his college and young adult group once a week, so we run stuff by him as well to get his input. The rest only play.

You know what our attitude fosters? A cooperative table top game group. We dont' get into arguments about the rules.

Your expressed attitude (see the part that I quoted) fosters friction and you may not even realize it.

I will caveat that with: your appeal for greater standardization is reasonable (and I completely agree with it!) for an Adventurer League / public play premise. Also a niche/fraction of the game, but resources need to be available to allows DMs to work from a "best common interpretation" as can be managed.

If an argument breaks out, I find that it's useful to ask:

Are you here to play, or are you here to argue?

[micahaphone]

While I don't use the "Heroic Rest" variant rule (5 min short rest, most reminiscent of 4E), I do houserule that short rests are a bit more loose in requirements. It doesn't have to be a full hour, it could be anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour, and doesn't require sitting and resting. Walking or riding a horse/cart, talking with npcs, doing research, shopping, anything not too strenuous. 90% of the time if a player asks me "does this count as a short rest?" I'll confirm yes. It's still a downtime, but doesn't bring pacing and gameplay to a screeching halt.

To be fair, that's also partially my players being cool and not pushing my houserule too hard.

[Pex]

No, that is not correct. For a paladin, you don't even take your oath until level 3.
Have you read the rules? They are not rules light. The idea is to be able to start and learn as you go.

The game is built to make the ongoing game a journey for each player to grow with and figure out their character as they level up. Most subclasses don't even come on line, nor begin to establish their core features, until Level 3.
(Clerics being a notable exception, and as I've observed some newbies struggle with them, a reasonably high skill coefficient class as are all full casters).
That is part of the "low barrier to entry for newbies" bit that is part of this edition's DNA.
You are supposed to learn as you go in this game. That's how it is built.
(See also the discussion on tiers of play).

Front loading 'builds' is what the small percentage of 'game mastery players' (in which case I must place myself since I like to participate here at GiTP) demand.

They mostly are; you are carping about exceptions.

The DM and the players discover together how this or that spell works, and most of the time the rules aren't that hard to figure out.

Let me tell you this: our group has been playing this game since 2014, the group my brother and I co DM in. (Our original DM got defeated by RL). The players, for the most part, are still discovering how various spells and powers work, and I coach them sometimes - since it interests me, but I always defer to the DM (my brother) when he's running it. And he shows me the same courtesy. My nephew DMs for his college and young adult group once a week, so we run stuff by him as well to get his input. The rest only play.

You know what our attitude fosters? A cooperative table top game group. We dont' get into arguments about the rules.

Your expressed attitude (see the part that I quoted) fosters friction and you may not even realize it.

I will caveat that with: your appeal for greater standardization is reasonable (and I completely agree with it!) for an Adventurer League / public play premise. Also a niche/fraction of the game, but resources need to be available to allows DMs to work from a "best common interpretation" as can be managed.

If an argument breaks out, I find that it's useful to ask:

Are you here to play, or are you here to argue?

You're being pedantic. Knowing what it means to play a paladin includes knowing you take the Oath at 3rd level. I'm not talking about the particular choices a player makes. It's about the game mechanics of how things work. Those should not be changing based on who is DM that day, barring house rules the DM brings up because that's his responsibility. That can include asking the players what house rules they would like, but that's also pedantic to the point.

As for not arguing that's part of the point. I did not argue with the DMs who denied me the ability to use my owl familiar to Help a player get advantage. I just had to "deal with it or leave the table" choosing to deal with it. However, dealing with it does not deny me from still being upset about the rules changing from under me. It was a ruling, not a house rule, and there was no way to know I needed to ask first before choosing to play the wizard. That I shouldn't have needed to ask is my point.

[noob]

So your argument is that there is no point in anyone outside of WotC having discussions about system design decisions unless you can bribe WotC with lots of players / money?

Why even bother participating in a forum if that is how you see things?

Except for the OP adopting a very sanctimonious / definitive tone in his initial post (and he did bring a lot more nuance to his arguments as he responded to various posts further down the thread), most of what people have been posting in this thread relate to how they perceive some aspects of the game (and its design foundations) as problematic or not, with some trying to suggest solutions that individual DMs can incorporate in their games to diminish the impact of those problems.

I do not have the perfect system or solution, within the D&D 5e framework, to try to achieve great balance between classes while having meaningful and challenging encounters for the party at all / most times (dungeon vs wilderness, 5 minutes work day).

Hearing various perspectives on the topic is still interesting and encourages people to further think about it from different angles (ex: OP’s references to how the initial classes were balanced through playtesting will have me dig back into those rules packages that were distributed over the D&D Next period, as I was not an active player at that time).

We may have finished covering all the ground there is to cover on this topic, but for my part, I’m all for continuing to hear more thoughts on this topic.

I am fine with hearing about what dnd should be but making the prediction the devs of 6e will do something that will alienate a portion of the player base is a different thing.
It is the difference between "I think WOTC should do this to dnd" and "I would prefer dnd with this modification"
In the latter you are not specifying how or who will do it so it could be for example that you are going to make your changes to the dnd you gm so you are not making predictions that are grim for a portion of the playerbase significantly different from the people you meet at your table.

[Asisreo1]

That's...not the point? My point isn't that they didn't know what they were trying to say, but that:

A. There was no one thing "they" were trying to say, because they were distinctly plural; and
B. They have incentive not to tell the truth about their intent.

This is not conjecture. We have proof that multiple people worked on D&D, and that they were not a hive mind. (Well, technically we don't have proof of the latter, but the burden of proof ain't on me.) We also have proof of the latter on any D&D community.
"They" refers to WoTC, which is a singular entity where it's comprised. (It's actually a subsection of Hasbro). We all know it wasn't just a single person that came up with the entirety of D&D 5e, but that doesn't mean that what they officially say isn't indicative of the organization's opinions. We can't say for certain how any individual feels about any part of the game. That doesn't matter, either. What we can say is that WoTC as a company approved the final product and thus WoTC as a company does agree with what they say and how they say it. Any singular opinions of the subject from individuals within the team must actually be stated, not just speculated.

And are you accusing WoTC of Fraud? Being purposefully deceitful to sell their products better? It's one thing to call a company incompetent but you can't just freely accuse a company of lying to their customers because it's a possibility and you think it's more likely than someone else's interpretation.


...what? It's based on text. It's based on spell slots, hit dice, action surges, resource pools, item charges, and all the other resources a player needs to consider whether and when to use. I thought you might contest some of the assumptions, but not "D&D has important resources you need to manage"!
Having resources to manage does not make resource management important in all cases. If you're given an abundance of resource, more than you need, than the management of those resources are hardly important. Gold and Carrying Capacity are types of resources, but the management of those resources may be unneeded in certain systems, 5e included. The existence of HP, Spell Slots, Charges, and ammunition does not mean these resources must be managed. If your character is never threatened with an attack, HP is unneeded.

But I do think resource management is an important part of 5e. I'm just unwilling to use any assumptions to form any conclusion, especially since we don't have any real, definitive proof that such assumptions will always be correct. Assumptions are not used for general conclusions. They're made to simplify specific scenarios.


"I'm not going to tell you anything I believe, I'm just going to say what you believe is wrong!"
Also, gods above and below, you're so presumptuous. "I'm going to tell you which assumptions are OK to make and which are not."
If we cannot agree on the very premise of what we're discussing, this discussion has already collapsed. If you want to reduce my statements into what you wish I said to make your side more appealing, fine. But it would preserve your time and mine if you would keep the discussion alive with what's relevant.


...so, you're saying that anyone who thinks that 5e is balanced around a 6-8 encounter, two short-rest day believes that D&D literally cannot be played any other way? Because nobody believes that.
Not what I said. I said "
"Assuming a typically sunny day over the course of a full playground visit, a child will likely need a nap after 4 hours of play."

Are you going to say, in earnest, that a child is required to visit a playground for 4 hours every sunny day if you want them to get maximum exercise?In my analogy, I didn't ask if you'd believe that a child cannot visit the park unless playing for 4 hours every day. I asked if you'd believe a child needs to visit a playground for 4 hours to maximize their exercise.

Likewise, I'm not saying its ridiculous to take the sentence "Assuming typical adventuring conditions and average luck, most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day." and interpret it to mean all days must be 6-8 encounter with 2 short rests or else the game is ruined. Of course, I do hold that position though I doubt to find any contention.

I am saying that interpreting the sentence to say "To maximize balance, please play with 6-8 encounter and 2 short rests." is extremely off-base from what it's saying in plain english.


Pawns are only useful for defense because you get eight of them, and they're easily discarded because they're so use-impaired. They can turn into useful pieces later, but only if your opponent lets them all the way to their back line.
Rooks, by contrast, are useful immediately. They're used to bring your king to a more defensible position, and their ability to threaten across the board is rivaled only by queens.
It's funny you say that considering that of all the pieces immediately usable during the beginning of the game, the pawns are of the few, the other exceptions are the knights which can't threaten the other side at all until the next go around. How you place a pawn at the start is incredibly important because it determines whether you'll start with an open board or a closed one.

But Pawns are also useful for offensive tactics as well. If you can threaten a very powerful piece, like a queen, with a pawn, you'll force their movement or trade a queen for a pawn. A very disadvantageous threat to your enemy. Pawns are easily disposable, but that in-and-of-itself gives it power that no other piece has. Pawns are more likely to act bold.

Rooks can't be used until turn 3 where you've moved 2 pieces just to let the rook out. Even then, it's rarely in an immediately useful position until turn 4 or 5. Yes, rooks are strong but they're rarely used outside mid-to-late game.


This isn't an argument. This is putting me in a box so you can ignore me.If I wanted to ignore you, I would. I really don't need any preliminary statement to just not engage with you. I'm engaging to see if there's anything more to your basis that an optimal day would run 6-8 encounters and 2 short rests that aren't based on assumptions.


Okay, there are three other reasons I could dismiss your post by this point.
One: You seem to think that constructing a scenario out of nothing is somehow a compelling argument when you do it, when you refuse to accept an argument from someone else because it assumes that resource management is important in D&D.
Two: You treat the game design process as a fundamentally casual, arbitrary process, which doesn't seem terribly respectful towards the professionals who designed it. Hell, I put more thought than that into the homebrew class I threw together in a few weeks for a contest!
Finally: You think the only reason someone would dismiss this argument immediately is because they disagree with it.It was asked "How could they" rather than "How did they."

Of course the game design process is arduous and requires a fine balancing point, which is why I never said it was casual. I briefly glanced over how they balance exactly, but it relies on surveys, spreadsheets, data, and playtesting. All of which has been confirmed by Rodney Thompson, Mike Mearls, and Jeremy Crawford.

If you've seen a Mike Mearls Happy Fun Hour Stream, you'll see how he goes about designing a new subclass for UA and whatnot. It really is mostly a reflexive thing. How do I design this class? Well, we'll put what we think would be cool, then we compare to things of similar caliber (no wish level ability at level 1), then math it out more intricately with a spreadsheet. Finally, put it through playtest and take the feedback.

Look, this is an interesting history, and some of it even sounds plausible. But it's all godsdang irrelevant! This is another reason to dismiss your post that has nothing to do with disagreeing with it, incidentally; after all, it's hard to disagree with something if you can't be bothered to read through all the faff and see what the conclusion is.If you want to dismiss my posts, I can't stop you. I'm hoping that this walkthrough of a no-schedule design process will convince those on-the-fence and haven't firmly made up their mind or still wondering how such a process could possibly occur.

...What?

Your winding argument about a way that D&D could have been designed without having a specific schedule is, instead, an argument about how they designed their schedule? And you have the audacity to say that there isn't a specific ratio of rests right after you describe the ratio of rests?
See, this is perhaps the biggest reason to dismiss your entire argument. You seem unaware of and uninterested in the implications of what you say, only whether they sound like they support the thesis you already decided on. In arguing that there wasn't a designed "schedule" for the adventuring day, you constructed a scenario where a schedule for the adventuring day was designed.

People arguing against you, on the whole, don't care much about which came first. What they care about is that D&D is balanced around a specific schedule. Whether the balance was intended from the beginning of development or discovered at the end doesn't really matter!I'm not saying that the schedule doesn't exist. I'm saying that the schedule doesn't tell you anything about balance, it tells you about when classes will usually run out of resources assuming typical adventuring circumstances. That being a Wizard, Cleric, Rogue, Fighter or some combination of a stereotypical group. When would such a group require a long rest before the threat of a TPK realistically looms over them?

If you want your game to be balanced around that, great. Do so. But if you don't want your game balanced around such a playstyle, you can adjust.

No, but most players will try to get the most out of their resources. If a player knows they only experience one (or a few) encounters in a day, they will be free to spend all (or a significant fraction of) their resources in every fight.

You're completely ignoring the role of player agency in game balance, which might be the single biggest mistake I've seen you make so far.I've never argued or assumed they wouldn't. In fact, I'm okay with the instances of the party knowing there's only a single encounter a day. The thing about the high-level spells is that once you use your highest option, you can't do so again in the fight. And as much as you hope that you won't have to, you'll probably need to keep using your other resources, but they diminish in ability as well.

A 9th-level spell is used. Congrats, but from round 2 onward, you only have level 8 and below spells. Your one wish in a fight is used, if a new scenario appears where Shapechange would have been useful or True Polymorph would save the day...it won't because you don't have it anymore.

I disagree for two reasons.
One: In my experience, spells (and other resources) vastly expand what your character can do. With spells, my cleric is calling down battle-reshaping miracles potentially every turn; without, he's just throwing sacred flame in the general directions of whatever enemies look to have the worst Dexterity saves. This only grows more obvious as levels increase and the impact of a single massive resource expenditure grows.
Two: The importance of the action economy does not diminish the importance of resource management. The two complement each other rather than overlapping.Of course spells expand your versatility, they're designed to. But the key is that you can only cast a single leveled one per combat. In earlier levels, you're making decisions like healing the downed wizard or dealing more damage to the enemyor inflicting a curse on your enemy. Each of these can range in spell power, the first option might only be a level one spell while the last option may be a 3rd-level option, but they're all useful at this particular round.
Spell power does matter, but the diversity of options is offset by the fact that you can only do one of these at a time, and the enemy can react before you get to do so again.

It's like chess again. You may have a queen and a rook in a position to checkmate their king immediately, but it would never work because you just can't move both at the same time. The difficulty is positioning your pieces within this constraint while using this system against your enemy. You can threaten both their knight and queen with your bishop on the same turn, but they can only protect one or the other, guaranteeing a piece removal.

This is what I mean when Action Economy is important. It's not just what you have at all times, it's what you can do at a particular point in time. True Ressurection is a powerful spell, but it just isn't appropriate to use during round 1 when noone has fallen.
Just one spell slot is usually more impactful than four rounds of anything an equivalently-leveled character can do without spending resources, which grows more obvious the higher level you are but is true as soon as the casters get entangle or sleep.
That same spell slot could do nothing at all while the character without any resource to expend impact the game much more as well. We can't forget that spells can fail. There's the obvious saving throw success of your enemy and the infamous counterspell, but there's also the immunities, counterplays (teleporting from a wall of force), and invalid targets (Rakshasa or a disguised fiend as a humanoid).

Spells are delightful when they work, but if they don't, you've ended up doing nothing at all with whatever slot you used. If your True Polymorph on your target fails...well...that's that. Your almighty 9th-level spell reduced to a large pile of nothing. Of course, I doubt anyone would use True Polymorph as an ailment unless they were sure it'd work, but it has probably happened before and made the player pretty bitter.




Finally, and end note on this post.

I'm not saying that if you want to run a game with resource management as the forefront of the challenge, you still shouldn't run 6-8 encounters or if you're struggling with this, you're the problem. What I'm saying is that not all games have a primary focus on resource management, and if you're playing such a game, you don't have to feel like you're kicking yourself in the rear for running this type of game.

Yes, if you want to run a resource management game, it's best to stick to their model. It only makes sense that a DM that wants to run a party dry to increase tension should run enough combats to actually reach that goal.

But if you want to challenge your players in a way that isn't just slogging them through a dungeon, consider increasing the challenge by forcing them to seriously think about their action economy. Have an enemy dangeous enough that blind NOVA and your strongest ability first won't make sense. Have their be an enemy where defensive behaviors are basically needed to keep up.

There's been a series of combat challenges that have started to appear on these forums. They are quite difficult despite having spellcasters on the team, and many have realized that just because they have a cleric in the party doesn't mean dashing into the enemy forces with Spirit Guardians active is the best position.

And if you want to challenge your players through other means, then you can do so. If you want the challenge not to come from their resources, but from logic and data collection, like a mystery, you should absolutely do so. It doesn't matter that your cleric has Speak with Dead or Zone of Truth. You own your adventure. You can design your adventure to have the victim not recall their killer's faces or have the killer be too far removed from the party up until the climax to properly interrogate them. And you can do so before the players even know their classes. You control the clues they can receive, if you want them to be challenged, challenge them by removing the obvious answers.

And I also wish that the DMG had a better guide to crafting an adventure and how to properly bring exciting and diverse sets of challenges. I personally feel like they've been too lax to help newer DM's design a well-designed adventure from scratch themselves.

But I don't feel like the DMG's offhand "Beware that players might run oput of resources if they go beyond this point" statement should automatically be interpreted as "Beware that players that don't reach this point wil not find a well-designed combat adventure."

[KorvinStarmast]

That I shouldn't have needed to ask is my point. That looks to me like a toxic attitude. Really. I think that I must be missing some context here. Whatever we may agree or disagree on (in a general sense) you've never come across to me that way.

I am scratching my head here. :smallconfused:

[MaxWilson]

That looks to me like a toxic attitude. Really. I think that I must be missing some context here. Whatever we may agree or disagree on (in a general sense) you've never come across to me that way.

I am scratching my head here. :smallconfused:

I suspect part of the problem may be the fact that you initially said "have you read the rules?" and then thought better and edited it to "You have read the rules," but by that point Pex had already seen it and started writing his response, probably never even saw the edit. I'm sure you can see how the original phrasing could cause friction, and that's why you changed it, but too late!

Of course I'm only speculating.

[Pex]

That looks to me like a toxic attitude. Really. I think that I must be missing some context here. Whatever we may agree or disagree on (in a general sense) you've never come across to me that way.

I am scratching my head here. :smallconfused:

It's simply a bother I have about 5E in general. My beef with skill use is a more specific example. The rules of the game change on me depending on who is DM that day. Not house rules, the fundamental rules of how to play the game. This DM says great weapon style can work on smites. That DM doesn't. This DM says owl familiars can Help for advantage. That DM doesn't. This DM says I can climb a tree because I want to. That DM doesn't. Mix and match among the DMs. I never know what the rule will be until it becomes applicable at the gaming moment. It doesn't matter if it's my character or someone else's because affecting someone else affects the party. This was never the case in Pathfinder, 3E, 2E, Ars Magica, GURPS, Rolemaster, Fantasy Warhammer for all the RPGs I played with more than one DM. The rules were always the same regardless of DM except for house rules the DM specifically told the players.

[diplomancer]

It's simply a bother I have about 5E in general. My beef with skill use is a more specific example. The rules of the game change on me depending on who is DM that day. Not house rules, the fundamental rules of how to play the game. This DM says great weapon style can work on smites. That DM doesn't. This DM says owl familiars can Help for advantage. That DM doesn't. This DM says I can climb a tree because I want to. That DM doesn't. Mix and match among the DMs. I never know what the rule will be until it becomes applicable at the gaming moment. It doesn't matter if it's my character or someone else's because affecting someone else affects the party. This was never the case in Pathfinder, 3E, 2E, Ars Magica, GURPS, Rolemaster, Fantasy Warhammer for all the RPGs I played with more than one DM. The rules were always the same regardless of DM except for house rules the DM specifically told the players.

Are those DMs you have a problem with experienced DMs? Because one good thing 5e did was to bring a lot of enthusiastic new people into the game, but who simply don't know the rules, expectations, and assumptions. I've heard lots of people DM without ever reading the DMG (or even carefully read the PHB). Obviously, this creates problems. I think the greatest fault of 5e and WotC in that regard is actually pretending that 5e is "simple".

In my experience, newbie DMs tend to be more set in their "rulings", and more experienced DMs, even if they don't know a particular rule, will be more willing to accept it if a player points it out (if not immediately, at least later on after some time for reflexion). Newbie DMs are more afraid of "losing control" of the game, and so tend to be more set in their ways.

Of the 3 gripes you mentioned, I think 1 of them is not a ruling but a strict houserule (familiars can't take the Help action to give advantage in combat; the book is quite clear that, yes, they can), one is "in-between" (the climbing a tree; the problem here is that unless your DM is Tolkien, he will not spend a long time describing trees; and some trees are simply easy to climb and should require no roll, and other trees can be quite hard to climb and if you are not skilled you will have a hard time; trees are simply not uniform. So, if a player wants to climb "a tree", meaning any nearby tree to get a better view or to hide, it would normally require no roll; but if a player wants to climb ONE particular tree, that tree might require a roll), and one is definitely a ruling (the smite with great-weapon style). I'd say asking about the latter one before deciding on a character is definitely a player responsibility.

[Democratus]

This was never the case in Pathfinder, 3E, 2E, Ars Magica, GURPS, Rolemaster, Fantasy Warhammer for all the RPGs I played with more than one DM. The rules were always the same regardless of DM except for house rules the DM specifically told the players.

I've played all those RPGs at conventions, and they were drastically different with every DM who ran them. And the differences were due to different interpretations of the rules as written. GURPS and Pathfinder (1e), in particular, are very loosely written and easy to interpret in many different ways.

This is just something that happens with games written by humans and run by humans.

[Willie the Duck]

This was never the case in Pathfinder, 3E, 2E, Ars Magica, GURPS, Rolemaster, Fantasy Warhammer for all the RPGs I played with more than one DM. The rules were always the same regardless of DM except for house rules the DM specifically told the players.

And again, I am in utter rapt amazement that you didn't have this problem with any of the above (2e in particular, but honestly all of them).

[KorvinStarmast]

It's simply a bother I have about 5E in general. My beef with skill use is a more specific example. The rules of the game change on me depending on who is DM that day. Not house rules, the fundamental rules of how to play the game. This DM says great weapon style can work on smites. That DM doesn't. This DM says owl familiars can Help for advantage. That DM doesn't. This DM says I can climb a tree because I want to. That DM doesn't. Mix and match among the DMs. I never know what the rule will be until it becomes applicable at the gaming moment. It doesn't matter if it's my character or someone else's because affecting someone else affects the party. This was never the case in Pathfinder, 3E, 2E, Ars Magica, GURPS, Rolemaster, Fantasy Warhammer for all the RPGs I played with more than one DM. The rules were always the same regardless of DM except for house rules the DM specifically told the players.
Ah, OK, so maybe it's this: too often the rules themselves are in conflict with one another, moreso than you having a conflict with the DM? What came across to me as toxic was the latter thought, and I think I misunderstood what you were pointing at. Am I reading you more clearly?

I think you are not the only one who has noticed that the rules themselves could have used another edit / scrub before going live.

For diplomancer:

I think the greatest fault of 5e and WotC in that regard is actually pretending that 5e is "simple". Yes, and not putting in a sample encounter up front in the DMG and as an appendix to the PHB. (OD&D and AD&D 1e had a few pages of "here's what an encounter looks like!" in their rule books). So too did Basic and B/X.

Why didn't they do that for this edition? No idea.

@Max: what I was trying to describe as toxic was an idea that "I shouldn't have to ask" being a case of not being willing to engage in dialogue with a DM, which struck me as very odd given Pex' long experience with the game.
I surely saw something there that wasn't there.
(Pex and I share quite a few positions in common on this game, one of them being "There is nothing wrong with having an 18 in a stat at first level").

[Pex]

And again, I am in utter rapt amazement that you didn't have this problem with any of the above (2e in particular, but honestly all of them).

It's true, Anything that was different was a specific house rule the DM mentioned up front. For example, one Pathfinder campaign had all healing outside of combat be maximized. Never in any other Pathfinder game, but it was a known factor going in. My college group came up with our own mana system for 2E magic. 2E games out of college used the normal rules. I knew the difference going in. In 5E it's all up in the air how a particular DM will interpret something. For the exact same interaction of rules two different DMs come up with different answers. Not a house rule, a ruling at the moment it happens in Session Number greater than 0.

I know now what specific questions to ask for my class abilities in 5E, but I resent having to do so. When I didn't know the problem was worse, such as being denied owl familiar Help. I don't yet ask DMs at Session 0 how trees work. Even if I better I shouldn't have to, because then I'd also have to ask about climbing walls, knowing about monster abilities, identifying poisons and diseases and non-magic medicines to cure them, and there will always be something I forget to ask until too late not necessarily about a skill in particular.

[Willie the Duck]

It's true, Anything that was different was a specific house rule the DM mentioned up front. For example, one Pathfinder campaign had all healing outside of combat be maximized. Never in any other Pathfinder game, but it was a known factor going in. My college group came up with our own mana system for 2E magic. 2E games out of college used the normal rules. I knew the difference going in. In 5E it's all up in the air how a particular DM will interpret something. For the exact same interaction of rules two different DMs come up with different answers. Not a house rule, a ruling at the moment it happens in Session Number greater than 0.

This has been discussed a million times from sunrise, but there is no 'the normal rules' for 2e. There are 9 or 10 instances of 'as determined by the DM' or 'as determined by circumstance' in the PHB, massively multiple instances of the same or similar phrasing in the DMG, a half dozen explicit references to there being no formula for something, and repeated declarations that a DM must determine for themselves how the game rules will play out. If your 2e games played out the same way, it is through convergent decision-making, not because the game was built with more rigorous and less ambiguous rules.

As Democratus points out, the other systems are the same. GURPS in particular, while exceedingly good for knowing the exact modifier for shooting an opponent while the two of you are riding on opposite moving vehicles with a 30 mph relative velocity, 100 meters apart, with a 20 mph headwind, at dusk, leaves many of the non-physical skills, and the resolution thereof, up to the GM. Pathfinder I don't know and D&D3e I'll grant is very definitive (in my mind, 'clear, exhaustive, and terrible,' but we can disagree on that).

Clearly you have had some terrible experiences with 5e, and I don't dismiss that experience. Whether 'game playout should not change between groups' is even something to which systems ought aspire I'll leave to those who have the time to put forth decent arguments. However, I strongly feel that your view that other systems are better at this thing than 5e is at least somewhat swayed by a non-representatively uniform experience not actually supported by the texts of the other systems rule text.

[Pex]

My experience with 5E is not horrible or else I wouldn't be playing it. It is simply a bother, but what bothers me more is people telling me I shouldn't be having the bother I do or I'm wrong to have it. Ignoring house rules, for all those RPGs the rules of how the game is played do not change from DM to DM. Nothing changes about the 2E paladin. Nothing changes about 3E skills. Nothing changes about Pathfinder feats. Nothing changes about Rolemaster charts. Nothing changes about GURPS roll under or equal your skill value on 3d6. Nothing changes about Ars Magica formula to calculate your spell value. (New editions may change the game math of the RPGs, but that's besides the point.) From game to game to game the rules are the same. Not so in 5E. How familiars work change, How smites work change. The ability to climb a tree changes. How some feats like Shield Master and Magic Initiate work change. Something else I can't think of right now changes. There's always something.

[Tanarii]

3e and 4e were full of precise jargon, and interpretations of how basic things in the PHB worked (like stealth) were wildly all over the place. The WotC forums were chock full of rules debates on how various rules worked, especially in interaction with other rules. No two tables played the same way. 5e (overall) has less debates because the answer is the same as 3e and 4e, we just get to it quicker: ask your DM. The difference is a DM and players know that going in, they don't think there is always a 'right answer'.

I didn't spend a lot of time online during 2e, so I probably thought how lots of rules worked was clear. Of course, coming from 1e it seemed like a rules house cleaning. OTOH I've felt that way about each edition on release, and to some degree it's true, because the rules have expanded like crazy in splats as the edition progressed. :smallamused:

(This is no comment on having skill DC tables. I agree that would probably result in more consistency. I just feel it would hurt the game more than help it.)

[Willie the Duck]

Ignoring house rules, for all those RPGs the rules of how the game is played do not change from DM to DM. Nothing changes about the 2E paladin. Nothing changes about 3E skills. Nothing changes about Pathfinder feats. Nothing changes about Rolemaster charts. Nothing changes about GURPS roll under or equal your skill value on 3d6. Nothing changes about Ars Magica formula to calculate your spell value. (New editions may change the game math of the RPGs, but that's besides the point.) From game to game to game the rules are the same.

That is quite literally not true. Random example, 2E Rules for swimming (PHB, p. 120) "When the DM determines the swimming ability of character, the decision should be based on his campaign. If the campaign is centered around a large body of water, or if a character grew up near the sea, chances are good that the character knows how to swim. However, being a sailor does not guarantee that a character can swim." (remember that both the non-weapon proficiency system and the secondary skill system are optional add-on rules). So the basic question of whether your paladin lives or dies if they fall off a boat is going to differ from DM to DM and campaign to campaign. Even if they do get to swim in a given circumstance, how likely they are to survive an extended swimming experience is going to be completely dependent upon DM fiat. "If the seas are choppy, a Constitution check should be made every hour spent swimming, regardless of the character's Constitution. Rough seas can require more frequent checks; heavy seas or storms may require a check every round. The DM may decide that adverse conditions cause a character's Constitution score to drop more rapidly than 1 point per hour. " Once your paladin makes it to ground and completes the rest of their adventuring, the XP they gain will be dependent upon the DM (DMG, p. 47) "The other group award is that earned for the completion of an adventure. This award is determined by the DM, based on the adventure's difficulty. There is no formula to determine the size of this award, since too many variables can come into play" (then some subjective guidelines, mostly providing an upper cap). They seemed rather insistent on this part pertaining to XP, referencing twice in the first paragraph of the Experience section that there was no universal formula for XP determination. "This chapter contains instructions for determining specific experience awards. It also gives guidelines about awarding experience in general. However, it does not provide
absolute mathematical formulas for calculating experience in every situation. Awarding experience points (XP) is one of the DM's most difficult jobs. The job is difficult because there are only a few rules (and a lot of guidelines) for the DM to rely on. The DM must learn nearly everything he knows
about experience points from running game sessions. There. is no magical formula or die roll to determine if he is doing the right or wrong thing. Only time, instinct, and player reactions will tell." Same with Treasure "The DM wants each magical treasure, no matter how small, to feel special, but at the same time he must be able to balance the pain of its acquisition against the reward. This is not a thing the DM can learn through formulae or tables. It takes time and judgment"
Further examples: Polymorph any object: "When it is cast in order to change other objects, the duration of the spell will depend on how radical a change it is from the original state to its enchanted state, as well as how different it is in size. This will be determined by your Dungeon Master [plus guidelines, but many of them subjective]" Speak with Animals: "If the animal is friendly or of the same general alignment as the priest, there is a possibility that the animal will do some favor or service for the priest. This possibility is determined by the DM." Illusions in general: "An Illusion pell, therefore, depends on its believability. Believability is determined by the situation and a saving throw." Cure disease: "The affliction rapidly disappears thereafter, making the cured creature whole and well in from one tum to 10 days, depending on the type of disuse and the stale of its advancement when the cure took place. (The DM must adjudicate these conditions.)"

GURPS is another great counter example. Yes the roll under skill value on 3d6 model is well established, but outside of combat and physical interaction skills, exactly what modifiers to add, or more importantly what a successfull skill check will do are largely undefined. 4e might have fixed some of this, but I know in 3e a character with heavy point dedication in Administration, Psychology, Economics, Performance, Bard (public speaking in 4e), Biology, and Observation is going to have a set of abilities almost completely constrained by how their GM views each of these skills and what the do or do not allow. Secondly, and admittedly this is social not rules-text, but -- I don't know if it's actually in the game marketing or not, but one of the primary arguments GURPS's fans make about why it isn't unplayably complex is that it is meant as a toolkit, wherein each GM/group only uses the parts they consider important and jettison the rest. Now, that's not the game rules of course, but the people who play it. However, if that means you won't be able to go to differing gaming groups and get the same experience, I'm not sure that your apparent goals will be met.


3e and 4e were full of precise jargon, and interpretations of how basic things in the PHB worked (like stealth) were wildly all over the place. The WotC forums were chock full of rules debates on how various rules worked, especially in interaction with other rules. No two tables played the same way. 5e (overall) has less debates because the answer is the same as 3e and 4e, we just get to it quicker: ask your DM. The difference is a DM and players know that going in, they don't think there is always a 'right answer'.
That was my experience with the matter. Sure there are nice clean tables of DCs for basic physical task resolution skill checks (and encumbrance and max press were rolled into one system, etc.), but stealth, vision, held actions and other case-whens, and so on were just as murky and poorly defined.


I didn't spend a lot of time online during 2e, so I probably thought how lots of rules worked was clear. Of course, coming from 1e it seemed like a rules house cleaning. OTOH I've felt that way about each edition on release, and to some degree it's true, because the rules have expanded like crazy in splats as the edition progressed. :smallamused:
At the most basic level, 2e clears out some rather obvious ambiguous places. 1e's initiative may have a technically correct single interpretation (I remember the debates on Dragonsfoot, do not recall if I was convinced one way or the other), but if you can't even get a majority of uber-AD&D pedants 30 years later to agree, then perhaps it's best that 2e came along and simplified it. Likewise stuff like rolling bards into the basic class progression. That said, it is still the same exception-based and new-subsystem-as-needed base engine that AD&D ran on. Apparently Lorraine W. wanted backwards compatibility over other concerns, which I think that it was a bit of a wasted opportunity. I think 2e would have been a great time to try some of the basic design conceits we got with 3e, including things like a generalized resolution mechanic or the like. 2e does, however, wear its role as a 'make this what you want it to be' aesthetic on its sleeve, complete with large sections under optional banners and the like. That I really appreciate.


(This is no comment on having skill DC tables. I agree that would probably result in more consistency. I just feel it would hurt the game more than help it.)
Yeah, honestly I don't really have a problem with Skill DC lists (other than I don't think that the common examples of 3e/4e/pf are actually good, and 3e's helping keep people who want to use not-magic accomplish anything on a different --lower-- playing field than even 2nd level spells), only that I think it creates a false sense of rigor, even though it's really just the tip of the iceberg.

[Pex]

In 2E: Have the Non Weapon Proficiency? Yes: Roll under ability score - # as written. If succeed do thing. No: You can't do it. Every DM I played with. For class ability just do it.
In GURPS: Thing needed to be done. Roll less than or equal your skill. If succeed it's done. Every DM I played with.
In Rolemaster: Want to do something. Roll percentile. DM consults chart and gives results. Every DM I played with.
In Ars Magica: Want to do something. Roll 1d10 and add appropriate character sheet number to get a target number. Roll a 0 it's a botch. Every DM I played with. It's been a while. I remember how you increase your skills but don't remember if there are target number tables or it's DM fiat. If it's DM fiat c'est la vie. I know there are target numbers for spells.
For Fantasy Warhammer it is more a blur now. I remember the character sheet. I didn't really enjoy the game that much, so I'll drop this.
In 3E/Pathfinder: Feat allows This. Class ability does that. DC tables give examples of what you can do, and you can Take 10/20. Every DM I played with.
In 5E: Want to do a skill? DC is whatever the DM feels like. Want to use a class ability or feat? How it works depends on how DM interprets the rules.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Except they were not asking for an improvement to dnd but a change that is neither an improvement nor a downgrade but making it be a different system guaranteed to anger many dnd players.
It is more akin to saying "I dislike my government and I think there should be a revolution in my government just so it fits more my preference instead of me moving to a neighbouring government that fits better my preferences"
No they can not make the creator of the game change the game since the creator already had bad experiences specifically about changing what this player wanted to change. They should instead either make their own changes at their table or pick up another game.

Some people just like a resource management game and plays dnd should they be made unhappy so that the players that prefers not having resource management game and somehow plays dnd and does not want to do the changes at their own table are happier?
There is no point into that unless those who dislikes resource management and for some reason are physically unable to switch to another system are an overwhelming majority.
Even then it is a bad move for the company because the players which disliked resource management were already playing the game for some reason and they were likely to stay because of "being unable to play another game" so financially it is a bad idea to decide to cater to them and potentially lose players they already had(those who liked resource management).

A company role is not maximising the happiness of a random player nor maximising the average happiness of the players but just to gain as much money as possible.
So those who complains about the main roots of the system the developers made are not bringing anything unless they prove that more new people would come if they changed the thing than the number of lost players.
So by saying your personal opinion as someone who plays dnd about what the company should do to please you then you are bringing information that does not interest the company since you are already a client even if it is because you are forced at gun point to play a game with traits you do not want.
I'm baffled by this argument. Not by the general thrust—I'm very familiar with that—but the details.

For instance: Your general argument is that I'm just arguing that D&D should match my preferences rather than someone else's, but the change would sacrifice what that someone likes about D&D, so it would just be a zero sum change. Alright, that's internally-consistent...but it clashes with the claim that my change would be a downgrade. If the way the game works isn't just a matter of preference and some rules are better or worse than each other, you'd need to actually argue why resource management gameplay is better. Which you don't.

What makes it worse is the political analogy, which is both stupid (while staying within forum rules, not all possible political systems actually exist and most people can't just casually emigrate to another country) and clashes with the argument about the game because the two are vastly different in scope. I'm not sure if it would be worse to treat gaming with the level of importance associated with politics, or to treat politics with the level of frivolity associated with gaming.



"They" refers to WoTC, which is a singular entity where it's comprised. (It's actually a subsection of Hasbro). We all know it wasn't just a single person that came up with the entirety of D&D 5e, but that doesn't mean that what they officially say isn't indicative of the organization's opinions.
The entire point I made is that WotC isn't actually a sapient entity capable of disclosing its thoughts to anyone.


And are you accusing WoTC of Fraud? Being purposefully deceitful to sell their products better?
Fraud has a very specific legal definition. This wouldn't qualify as fraud any more than a deodorant ad showing semi-clothed women throwing themselves at the guy using it.
I'm accusing WotC of marketing.


Having resources to manage does not make resource management important in all cases. If you're given an abundance of resource, more than you need, than the management of those resources are hardly important. Gold and Carrying Capacity are types of resources, but the management of those resources may be unneeded in certain systems, 5e included. The existence of HP, Spell Slots, Charges, and ammunition does not mean these resources must be managed. If your character is never threatened with an attack, HP is unneeded.

But I do think resource management is an important part of 5e. I'm just unwilling to use any assumptions to form any conclusion, especially since we don't have any real, definitive proof that such assumptions will always be correct. Assumptions are not used for general conclusions. They're made to simplify specific scenarios.
Let me see if I understand this correctly. You admit that you think resource management is important to D&D, but because there are theoretical scenarios where it might not be, you refuse to make any assumptions on matter of principle. Because you don't like assumptions?

The way you've ignored and distorted my arguments is frustrating on its own, but this goes beyond. You are refusing to accept even the most straightforward of assumptions about D&D because assumptions are bad, despite the fact that A. assumptions are required for basic logic to function and B. you, too are making ass



GURPS in particular, while exceedingly good for knowing the exact modifier for shooting an opponent while the two of you are riding on opposite moving vehicles with a 30 mph relative velocity, 100 meters apart, with a 20 mph headwind, at dusk, leaves many of the non-physical skills, and the resolution thereof, up to the GM.
Which is especially true of social skills, which is true in almost every TRPG I've played. (I've read a few with more focus on social situations—and hence, unsurprisingly, more precise social interaction mechanics—but I haven't had the opportunity to play any of them.)

[KorvinStarmast]

I'm accusing WotC of marketing. Their proficiency in that skill has recently been brought into question, and even a lawsuit :smalleek: (from Weiss and Hickman vis a vis the head fake / course change on 'let's do some new Dragonlance novels' but that's a separate topic)

[MaxWilson]

That said, it is still the same exception-based and new-subsystem-as-needed base engine that AD&D ran on. Apparently Lorraine W. wanted backwards compatibility over other concerns, which I think that it was a bit of a wasted opportunity. I think 2e would have been a great time to try some of the basic design conceits we got with 3e, including things like a generalized resolution mechanic or the like. 2e does, however, wear its role as a 'make this what you want it to be' aesthetic on its sleeve, complete with large sections under optional banners and the like. That I really appreciate.

I for one am very grateful than 2nd edition eschews any attempts at a universal resolution mechanic, and maintains backwards compatibility with 1E.

If 2nd edition has been aiming at universal resolution mechanics, we probably would never have gotten wild magic: randomly determining effective spell level per casting, with certain values triggering a roll for additional effects--that square peg never would have fit into whatever round hole a universal resolution mechanic would have pre-defined. The freedom to come up with systems that actually behave as required, instead of systems that fit into the round hole, is one of the best things about 2nd edition.

And getting to still play classic AD&D 1E adventures is also great IMO.

[noob]

I'm baffled by this argument. Not by the general thrust—I'm very familiar with that—but the details.

For instance: Your general argument is that I'm just arguing that D&D should match my preferences rather than someone else's, but the change would sacrifice what that someone likes about D&D, so it would just be a zero sum change. Alright, that's internally-consistent...but it clashes with the claim that my change would be a downgrade. If the way the game works isn't just a matter of preference and some rules are better or worse than each other, you'd need to actually argue why resource management gameplay is better. Which you don't.

What makes it worse is the political analogy, which is both stupid (while staying within forum rules, not all possible political systems actually exist and most people can't just casually emigrate to another country) and clashes with the argument about the game because the two are vastly different in scope. I'm not sure if it would be worse to treat gaming with the level of importance associated with politics, or to treat politics with the level of frivolity associated with gaming.

It does costs more resources to redesign the system in a different way relatively to rehashing the same concepts over and over.
I did not say it was bad thing to do that just that it is a bad idea for the company which is a different thing.
From the very start I say over and over that it is a suboptimal move for wotc and you misinterpreted my arguments somehow thinking I meant "it is a bad thing as a whole"

Please read the discussion from the start to see I was talking about the fact it was a poor idea for wotc and not giving a judgement of value to the decision.

Even if making dnd be a resourceless system did make most of the player be happier it would be a bad idea to do the swap for wotc since the objective of a company is getting money so if they lose some players, make some players happier and get some new players and that it did not increase sales and got a lot of flack from it(minor but humans can be sensible to it or else they might not have backtracked after 4e) then they lost out due to the cost of making a system that is fundamentally different from what they were used to do.

For convincing someone who is looking out for their own interest to do a change you have to prove them they would gain more than the cost because of the risk aversion of people.

Also you did bring the political allegories and I was just using them afterwards by social mimicking and due to answering your posts.

And I insist: I never ever said it would be a downgrade to dnd (as far as I am concerned it is an upgrade because it makes the game much more simple to play: the heuristic of picking the best short term options suddenly works way better)
Just that wotc is unlikely to do that because it is not a good commercial idea from the pov of a company that just did revert a bunch of changes to their system structure because had a lot of negative feedback when they did change the structure of their system as much fundamentally as what you suggested.

You misinterpreting my goal (proving that wotc does not have an interest in doing this change) while I repeat the goal in each and every post makes this discussion much more complicated.

As far as I know since you still did not read my goal I should from now on only repeat my goal until you understand what my goal was then afterwards we would be finally able to do a rational discussion where you have all the elements needed to understand: if you do not know my goal (proving that wotc does not have an interest in doing this change) then you can not understand the arguments.

[Willie the Duck]

In 2E: Have the Non Weapon Proficiency? Yes: Roll under ability score - # as written. If succeed do thing. No: You can't do it. Every DM I played with. For class ability just do it.
In GURPS: Thing needed to be done. Roll less than or equal your skill. If succeed it's done. Every DM I played with.
In Rolemaster: Want to do something. Roll percentile. DM consults chart and gives results. Every DM I played with.
In Ars Magica: Want to do something. Roll 1d10 and add appropriate character sheet number to get a target number. Roll a 0 it's a botch. Every DM I played with. It's been a while. I remember how you increase your skills but don't remember if there are target number tables or it's DM fiat. If it's DM fiat c'est la vie. I know there are target numbers for spells.
For Fantasy Warhammer it is more a blur now. I remember the character sheet. I didn't really enjoy the game that much, so I'll drop this.
In 3E/Pathfinder: Feat allows This. Class ability does that. DC tables give examples of what you can do, and you can Take 10/20. Every DM I played with.
In 5E: Want to do a skill? DC is whatever the DM feels like. Want to use a class ability or feat? How it works depends on how DM interprets the rules.

Not much to say to this. I spelled out significant and specific cases where those games have areas where how things work depend in how the DM interpret the rules (or whether a given rule or system is even in effect). The very fact that each of your DMs used non-weapon proficiencies in 2E indicates a specific interpretation (well, clearly defined choice in this case). I can't tell you what your personal experience with each game was, obviously. Likewise, if those places where these games leave things open for DM/GM interpretation don't bother you, while the similar places in 5e do bother you, I also won't dismiss those. I think this is a case of YMMV. No one is required to like one thing or the other, and the key is to find a group with preferences that match your own.


Which is especially true of social skills, which is true in almost every TRPG I've played. (I've read a few with more focus on social situations—and hence, unsurprisingly, more precise social interaction mechanics—but I haven't had the opportunity to play any of them.)
It is certainly the most obvious. I do believe they produced a specific guidebook in 4e to expand the social rules. A friend of mine with a rather glaring axe to grind re: GURPS picked it up (to see if it would be helpful for designing a social system for a homebrew we were designing together) and was unimpressed, but that doesn't tell me much.


I for one am very grateful than 2nd edition eschews any attempts at a universal resolution mechanic, and maintains backwards compatibility with 1E.

If 2nd edition has been aiming at universal resolution mechanics, we probably would never have gotten wild magic: randomly determining effective spell level per casting, with certain values triggering a roll for additional effects--that square peg never would have fit into whatever round hole a universal resolution mechanic would have pre-defined. The freedom to come up with systems that actually behave as required, instead of systems that fit into the round hole, is one of the best things about 2nd edition.

And getting to still play classic AD&D 1E adventures is also great IMO.

Heh. Thanks for reminding me that 2e isn't just historically important because everyone didn't have 2-3 copies of the 1e core on their bookshelf (and 5 copies of UA for some reason)*. I would have loved Wild Magic and some of the other innovations of 2e to have come out for 1e, and then 2e could have been an experimental in-between that might have improved the eventual 3e. Yes, I suppose if 2e was your personal preferred TSR-era system, then it certainly wasn't a wasted opportunity. I just meant that, if they had started experimenting with some of those mechanics in '89, then the version they put out in 2000 would have hopefully had some kinks worked out.
*My actual D&D trajectory was: 1) BX/BECMI/occasional 1E hybrid, 2) 1E, 3) 2E through halfway through the 'complete' series, then back to BECMI (plus lots of other systems) for most of the 90s. So yeah for me 2E was a footnote, but I can understand why it wouldn't be for others.