Gritty Realism vs Warlock Invocations

[carrdrivesyou]

So, there are a number of warlock invocations that grant a once per long rest ability, typically in the form of a spell (i.e. Undying Servitude --> Animate Dead). The intent for these, I think, are to be simple, once a day abilities that adds flavor and a nifty trick to your character; similar to a Mystic Arcanum

Given the Gritty Realism rules (SR is 8 hours, LR is 1 Week), these become mostly useless, as they are not available often enough to be reliable options.

That all being said, would it be game-breaking to homebrew these into being 1/Day abilities instead? Because there are some concepts (especially a necromancer type), that just are not feasible given the resting rules. There wouldn't be enough spell slots to go around, unless you were a suitably powerful (6th level) wizard that could use Arcane Recovery for the slot, but that is a **Dedicated** spell slot per day.

On the other side of this coin, does this make the "at will" invocations (Beast Speech --> Speak with Animals) more powerful by the same logic?

Just looking for input here.

[OldTrees1]

Gritty Realism elevates at-will abilities and diminishes long rest abilities. Warlocks are no exception.


If you change those Long Rest abilities to be Short Rest abilities, then why are you using Gritty Realism?

[Man_Over_Game]

I think a better solution may just be to change spells that have a day's worth of duration to inflate with the Gritty Realism change.

That way, you're still casting it as normal, it's just harder to leverage since most of the benefits of those powers are static (an area is warded for a week) and you won't be able to refresh it as normal (only that area is warded for 7 days, instead of a new area being warded each day).

It rewards preparation, caution, and expectation. Like Gritty Realism should.

[MoiMagnus]

IMO, they are bad even with normal rules. I'm still not sure to understand why it would be so strong to just add those spells to your spell known (one invocation for one specific spell known does not feel OP to me).

However, I disagree on this change as a reaction to Gritty Realism. I don't think that GR makes the invocation worse than usually.

(As always, GR or not, the power of the Warlock heavily depends on the number and repartition of short rests. If you end up casting only 4 spells or less per long rest, you might have a bad time, so talk with the GM/table about potential houserules, or multiclassing/changing of character)

[heavyfuel]

Warlocks do fine in GR. In fact, the few "at will" abilities they have (EB and some invocations) make them pretty great in GR.

However, they do become - somehow - even more boring than they are with standard rests.

If you wish to buff these 1/week invocations to be 1/day, do this knowing that you will be taking a class that already outperforms most other and making them even slightly stronger in exchange for making them not mind-numbing to play

[Elbeyon]

Gritty Realism nerfs most long duration/rest abilities. Mage armor normally lasts an adventuring day. Should mage armor be 1/day cast? Should it last 7 times as long (56 hours), perhaps 8 hours a day for a week? Mage armor now only lasts 1/7 an adventuring week.

[Tanarii]

How are you running GR?

Is it: 1 deadly to 3 Easy encounters on one day, then repeat twice more on other days, then a weeks rest?

Or is it: play every minute of every day and things just happen when they happen?

[strangebloke]

I think a better solution may just be to change spells that have a day's worth of duration to inflate with the Gritty Realism change.

That way, you're still casting it as normal, it's just harder to leverage since most of the benefits of those powers are static (an area is warded for a week) and you won't be able to refresh it as normal (only that area is warded for 7 days, instead of a new area being warded each day).

It rewards preparation, caution, and expectation. Like Gritty Realism should.

CORRECT. The issues with 'Gritty Realism' are not hard to solve, people just don't know how to do it. I've been running this since 2016 at multiple tables. It works great.


Long rests are 7 days of downtime. Long Rests remove all levels of exhaustion.
Short rests require eight hours of downtime, and remove 1 level of exhaustion
Downtime during a long rest can include nonlethal combat (for sport or training), gambling, criminal activities, research, crafting, or shopping, or other useful tasks so long as no (non-ritual) spells are cast and no damage is taken.
Long rests require a secure environment in which to rest, like an inn, walled encampment, or cavern.
Magic items that regain charges each day, now do so at the start of each week.
Spells with a duration of 1 hour now have a duration of “Until dawn of the next day”
Spells with a duration of 8 hours now have a duration of “until the end of the week”
Spells with a duration of 24 hours (including animate dead) now have a duration of “until the end of the next new moon or full moon” (15 days, roughly)


The only time this gets troublesome is when you have several weeks of travel without rest, but this is largely fine, since I don't do random encounters. When the party gets to wherever the danger is, they cast spells like mage armor and move on. It's not totally balanced. Abilities with 10 minute casting times become a lot easier to use. Dungeons are either pretty short (2-4 encounters) or contain some way for the party to get a 'free' short rest in a compressed time interval (handwaved as a common sort of anomaly in regions of rampant magic.)

It works pretty well for my purposes: making it easy to fit in enough encounters and short rests that the resource economy is actually balanced.

[Tanarii]

Spells with a duration of 1 hour now have a duration of “Until dawn of the next day”
Spells with a duration of 8 hours now have a duration of “until the end of the week”
Spells with a duration of 24 hours (including animate dead) now have a duration of “until the end of the next new moon or full moon” (15 days, roughly)These should be 8 hrs, 48 hours, and 1 week respectively. With some rounding.

[Reynaert]

These should be 8 hrs, 48 hours, and 1 week respectively. With some rounding.

That depends on how much time goes by between two 7-day long rests. Which strangebloke did not specify.

From his numbers, I guessculate that his party long rests every fortnight on average.

Although, with that in mind, the long rest should be around 5 days of downtime, not 7, to line up with the rest of the duration scalings.

For completeness, with the numbers you're giving here (8h, 48h and 1w) a long rest should be 2 to 3 days of downtime to line up.

I'm curious though; how did you come by those numbers?

[Tanarii]

I'm curious though; how did you come by those numbers?
I multiplied by 7 for the week between long rests.

[Reynaert]

I multiplied by 7 for the week between long rests.

Ah, now I see. But that way you should get basically a midweek of adventuring (16*7 hours) and a long weekend of long resting (8*7 hours is 2 days and 3 nights). (I.E. the adventuring day + the long rest becomes a week). Which, to be fair, is a very nice compromise.

Wait, weeks are 7 days in D&D aren't they? I vaguely recall a setting where they were 10.

[bid]

Silly thing, but what if any active spell duration can be reset during a short rest?
That way, mage armor only takes 1 spell slot per week if you short rest every 8 hours.

[Selion]

So, there are a number of warlock invocations that grant a once per long rest ability, typically in the form of a spell (i.e. Undying Servitude --> Animate Dead). The intent for these, I think, are to be simple, once a day abilities that adds flavor and a nifty trick to your character; similar to a Mystic Arcanum

Given the Gritty Realism rules (SR is 8 hours, LR is 1 Week), these become mostly useless, as they are not available often enough to be reliable options.

That all being said, would it be game-breaking to homebrew these into being 1/Day abilities instead? Because there are some concepts (especially a necromancer type), that just are not feasible given the resting rules. There wouldn't be enough spell slots to go around, unless you were a suitably powerful (6th level) wizard that could use Arcane Recovery for the slot, but that is a **Dedicated** spell slot per day.

On the other side of this coin, does this make the "at will" invocations (Beast Speech --> Speak with Animals) more powerful by the same logic?

Just looking for input here.

They are the equivalent of wizard and sorcerers slots, it's exactly the point of gritty realism. Btw, the encounters you have thorough a week should be roughly equivalent to what you have usually in a day of adventure. Think about lord of the ring, they had not three/four battles per day.
I think something that should be improved are hour durations spells/abilities (eq wild shape, mage armor) , they are designed to cover more than one battle, in gritty realism that won't happen.
So, to answer your question, I could see the animate dead last a week, and summon elemental last for something like a full day, but they should be cast just one time per week

[Pex]

Don't think of it as once per long rest but once per game session. It doesn't matter how long in game world time a long rest is. A night, a week, a month, a millenium. What matters is how many long rests the players get per game session. Too many and players will nova everything. Too few and players get frustrated because they can't do anything, either resources are used up and will not get them back forever or for fear of needing it later will never use them. Personally I prefer having 1 long rest at least at end of the game session to start fresh next game, but once every two game sessions is fine. Exceptions allowed for the ocasional all roleplay game sessions where no resources are used which are fun.

Players want to use their stuff. They are supposed to use their stuff and get it back. Pacing matters, but let players get their long rest already. Use whatever game world time requirement for long rest you need to satisfy whatever versimilitude you feel necessary to have the game/campaign work for you, but for however long it is the players should get that long rest no later than once every two game sessions. Therefore, a warlock player gets to use his once a long rest invocation once every other game session, and it won't seem so bad.

[Rukelnikov]

Ah, now I see. But that way you should get basically a midweek of adventuring (16*7 hours) and a long weekend of long resting (8*7 hours is 2 days and 3 nights). (I.E. the adventuring day + the long rest becomes a week). Which, to be fair, is a very nice compromise.

Wait, weeks are 7 days in D&D aren't they? I vaguely recall a setting where they were 10.

In FR a week used to be 10 days, at least during the time of 3e (~1372-1375), idk if its still like that

[Keravath]

Gritty realism has a same if not worse impact on ANY necromancer, clerical or wizard.

Animate dead is a 3rd level spell. You need to cast it once/day to maintain your minions. This means that you need to use 7 spell slots during a week to maintain any undead. If a long rest takes a week you are using 7 3rd level+ slots during the long rest to keep your minions going. Between long rests is just as bad since you have to use 7 3rd level+ slots. If you get your slots back at the end of a long rest then you need to use 14 level 3+ slots to keep just one small group of undead minions going with Animate dead. Only a 19th level caster has 14 slots of level 3+ and it isn't worth maintaining a few skeletons or zombies for that price so it seems to me that gritty realism kills any form of necromancer, not just the warlock.

[Keravath]

In FR a week used to be 10 days, at least during the time of 3e (~1372-1375), idk if its still like that

I think in FR it is literally called a tenday ... and it is the equivalent of a week but is not referred to as such as far as I know. The FR calendar has 12 equal months with each composed of 3 tendays.

So when I've read rules in the DMG and elsewhere that refer to a "week" ... I usually interpret it as 7 days but of course a DM can choose any number that fits their game.

[Keravath]

These should be 8 hrs, 48 hours, and 1 week respectively. With some rounding.

I think the 24 hours going to a fortnight (~14 days) is due to things like Animate Dead which should really be cast once/day or long rest which means it has to last the entire adventuring "day" plus the downtime due to the long rest - or with one week of activity and a short rest every night followed by one week of a long rest.

[Rukelnikov]

I think in FR it is literally called a tenday ... and it is the equivalent of a week but is not referred to as such as far as I know. The FR calendar has 12 equal months with each composed of 3 tendays.

So when I've read rules in the DMG and elsewhere that refer to a "week" ... I usually interpret it as 7 days but of course a DM can choose any number that fits their game.

Thanks! Yeah, I didn't remember the calendar thing.

[strangebloke]

These should be 8 hrs, 48 hours, and 1 week respectively. With some rounding.

Very bold of you to tell me how my rules "should" work. :smallbiggrin:

You're not completely wrong. I note now that I posted the old version of my rules by mistake. For that campaign the wizards were basically required to keep track of weekdays, which was flavorful and (at the time) kind of fun, but I wouldn't do it again now without speaking to players about it.

My current version is more simply 8 hrs, 7 days, 21 days. I follow scaling here, but your math is a bit off. Normal long rests are 8 hours, not 24, so my long rest of seven days is actually 21 times the length of a normal long rest. Meanwhile my short rests are scaled up by a factor of eight. So the 1 hour spells are scaled by the 1 hour rest, and the 8 hour spells are scaled by the 8 hour rest.

[Tanarii]

Ah, now I see. But that way you should get basically a midweek of adventuring (16*7 hours) and a long weekend of long resting (8*7 hours is 2 days and 3 nights). (I.E. the adventuring day + the long rest becomes a week). Which, to be fair, is a very nice compromise.

Wait, weeks are 7 days in D&D aren't they? I vaguely recall a setting where they were 10.


I think in FR it is literally called a tenday ... and it is the equivalent of a week but is not referred to as such as far as I know. The FR calendar has 12 equal months with each composed of 3 tendays.

So when I've read rules in the DMG and elsewhere that refer to a "week" ... I usually interpret it as 7 days but of course a DM can choose any number that fits their game.
Yeah. For some reason I always assume Gritty is one week one (with one adventuring day split across 3 of those days) and one week off. But it absolutely could be two weeks on (again with one adventuring day split across 3 of those days) and one week off. That'd match the 16:8 of a standard long rest cycle better. And it gives you a total of 21 short rests over those 3 weeks (14 during "active" time), which matches the standard 24 (16 active) much better.

So yeah, really durations should be 21 times as long to sync up. But you're probably want to assume a 1/3 of an adventuring day about some time in each 5 day portion of the 14 day up-time, with not much else going on (resource wise) in the remaining 11 days.

Either that or you no-rest and short-rest resources become incredibly valuable, and probably you're batting heavily under par for each encounter challenge but facing a lot more in the time before a long rest.

[Sigreid]

Just want to point out that however long you have your rests be, the assumption for rest based abilities is basically 2 short rests or so per long rest, with 6-8 situations that will consume resources between long rests. The only real change is pacing.

[Kane0]

Those once per day invocations are very rarely good picks, I upgrade them to once per day without using a Warlock slot and in some cases also add it as a spell known (eg for Bane yes, for Animate Dead no.)

[Rukelnikov]

Just want to point out that however long you have your rests be, the assumption for rest based abilities is basically 2 short rests or so per long rest, with 6-8 situations that will consume resources between long rests. The only real change is pacing.

Not really, Animate Dead once a week means you can't keep your minions under your command, it essentially breaks the spell.

[Sigreid]

Not really, Animate Dead once a week means you can't keep your minions under your command, it essentially breaks the spell.

fair. Hadn't looked at each spell individually.

[strangebloke]

fair. Hadn't looked at each spell individually.

its not just that. Normally a spell that lasts an hour will last through your next short rest, but with gritty realism that won't be the case. Normally a spell that lasts 8 hours (like mage armor) will last through an entire adventuring day but with gritty realism that won't be the case.

Basically any spell that has a duration longer than ten minutes changes drastically with Gritty Realism. And to be fair, 'correcting' the durations as I did above changes things in a different way. Giving something like magic circle and 8 hour duration really changes how its used.

[Rukelnikov]

its not just that. Normally a spell that lasts an hour will last through your next short rest, but with gritty realism that won't be the case. Normally a spell that lasts 8 hours (like mage armor) will last through an entire adventuring day but with gritty realism that won't be the case.

Basically any spell that has a duration longer than ten minutes changes drastically with Gritty Realism. And to be fair, 'correcting' the durations as I did above changes things in a different way. Giving something like magic circle and 8 hour duration really changes how its used.

Well, I disagree a bit there. The idea of gritty realism is for resources to be stretched thinner than in the standard play, so having a 1 hour spell, like Hex for instance, available once a week instead of once a day means those resources have been stretched thinner, but their functionality remains largely unchanged.

Animate Dead, Mordenkainen's Private Sanctum, Temple of the Gods and some other spells require you to cast them every day for a "special" effect (In the case of AD its reasserting control over 4 creatures instead of raising one). Since spellcasting breaks a long rest, it is impossible to use the daily effects of such spells cause you can't rest and thus can never refresh the slots to cast them daily. That kind of spells are the ones I would modify for gritty realism.

[Erelamar]

My longest-running 5e campaign (~3-1/2 years) used Gritty Realism, though at the same time it was a West Marches-style game. When we started there wasn't much out yet beyond the Core to work with. So, digging through all its variants and options, I came up with a list that created the tone I wanted: episodic campaign, sword-and-sorcery/crossing the streams fantasy flavors, reward players for being cautious/prudent—a typical OSRish-type style. Gritty Realism worked great for that campaign as the players basically retreated back to their home city at the end of every session so they were always recharged for their next adventure. Only on a handful of occasions (mostly to do with boats/island-hopping) did they ever get a long rest inside a session.

Everything that's mentioned as a problem in this thread, I pretty much see as a feature. Gritty Realism changes the nature of the setting not just the mechanics of the game. Yeah, most undead are running around loose because it's hard to control them without some minor MacGuffin (which, maybe, a player necromancer could get their hands on). And if your campaign has room for year-long daily castings to make a Teleportation Circle permanent, then I think it has enough room for some special Downtime Activity (possibly with a quest or two for components) to just create the same effect with the rules similar for making magic items. The fear of mage armor or some other buff not lasting multiple encounters is a real one. It made some players more circumspect and others more reckless. Example: to either push onward into the strange catacombs beneath the bandit lair immediately while their spells are still up, or after a short rest when they can heal with HDs, or just putting a pin in it and retreating back to town with their loot to fight another day.

Magic Items become more powerful. Since they mention dawn/once a day and not short/long rest, I had them continue to function normally. Of course, the trade-off was not just any PC couldn't immediately know all about an item after a 1-hour short rest, they needed a whole night basically. Many Identify rituals were cast over the course of the campaign.

A final note: the traditional pace and tone of adventures, like the Pathfinder AP modules, should be completely thrown out the window. I would advise an almost completely player-driven campaign without world-ending consequences, and nothing too terrible happening if they fail to take out the bandits or the dragon or recover the lost crown from the caves of so-and-so (if they ran away and survived with a pocketful of gold then it was at least a partial success). The world keeps going on, just with changes: Oh, that town there? That doesn't exist anymore. This faction you were on good terms with? It's under new management and they don't care for you now. The dragon you failed to kill? It's hunting you and has been added as a very rare random wilderness encounter when you travel through these regions (in this specific case virtually no quests were taken in those regions until a suitably strong party could be assembled to return and kill the dragon [like out of a rotating crew of 11-12 players where you'd get like 3-5 tops at any given session, 9 showed up]).

[strangebloke]

Well, I disagree a bit there. The idea of gritty realism is for resources to be stretched thinner than in the standard play, so having a 1 hour spell, like Hex for instance, available once a week instead of once a day means those resources have been stretched thinner, but their functionality remains largely unchanged.

Animate Dead, Mordenkainen's Private Sanctum, Temple of the Gods and some other spells require you to cast them every day for a "special" effect (In the case of AD its reasserting control over 4 creatures instead of raising one). Since spellcasting breaks a long rest, it is impossible to use the daily effects of such spells cause you can't rest and thus can never refresh the slots to cast them daily. That kind of spells are the ones I would modify for gritty realism.

I think the primary goal of gritty realism is to justify fitting 4-6 encounters into a single "day." If you try to force players to do this under normal circumstances it leads to (imo) some pretty ridiculous 'days' unless you're in a dungeon for every adventure.

[Rukelnikov]

I think the primary goal of gritty realism is to justify fitting 4-6 encounters into a single "day." If you try to force players to do this under normal circumstances it leads to (imo) some pretty ridiculous 'days' unless you're in a dungeon for every adventure.

Ok, I can get that. I guess we have different goals for gritty realism, which leads to different conclusions.

Btw, what do you do then when they DO are in a dungeon?

[strangebloke]

Ok, I can get that. I guess we have different goals for gritty realism, which leads to different conclusions.

Btw, what do you do then when they DO are in a dungeon?

"Negative energy cannot destroy positive energy, only displace it, and in regions that are filled with negative energy because of necromancy/demonic worship you will often find pockets of positive energy so intense they are almost like a magic spell. The first time you enter such a region, the energy washes over you and restores you, almost as though you had a full night's sleep."

Or in other words, I cheat. :smallwink: Short rest in a bottle.

With that said, a lot of my dungeons are three combat encounters with 1-2 non-combat encounters, which is small enough to fit between short rests.

[Rukelnikov]

"Negative energy cannot destroy positive energy, only displace it, and in regions that are filled with negative energy because of necromany/demonic worship you will often find pocket of positive energy so intense they are almost like a magic spell. The first time you enter such a region, the energy washes over you and restores you, almost as though you had a full night's sleep."

Or in other words, I cheat. :smallwink: Short rest in a bottle.

With that said, a lot of my dungeons are three combat encounters with 1-2 non-combat encounters, which is small enough to fit between short rests.

Yeah, that works :P

[Tanarii]

Btw, what do you do then when they DO are in a dungeon?1) variable resting depending on 'zone'. This is usually problematic for folks for versimilitude reasons, but you can just tie it to a danger level you introduce, and justify it with narrative handwavium because in-game description reasons. Ymmv.

2) players only deal with dungeons, enemy strongholds, and other concentrated enemies with indicidual encounters FAR below their capacity. Basically treat the dungeon as one or two big encounter when considering the challenge level, when planning. (That probably makes it a bit easy if they can divide and conquer classical dungeon room style though.)

3) watch them die

[RSP]

Extend Spell would need reworking, I’d imagine, though this only matters if you a Sorc who takes it.

[ad_hoc]

Ok, I can get that. I guess we have different goals for gritty realism, which leads to different conclusions.

Btw, what do you do then when they DO are in a dungeon?

My resting rule is "only long rest in a friendly settlement." (as always special exceptions can apply)

Works well for us both for narrative and game balance.