Bring back per encounter resources

[Skrum]

Having just read the thread about people complaining about rests, and having played the game long enough to know that rests are a source of class friction, I think it's worth revisiting per encounter.

Get rid of short rest recoveries, and bring back per encounter recoveries. While I'm sure there's some cases for exception, martial abilities will come back on a per encounter basis, and spells will work on a per day/long rest basis.

Fighters, monks, barbs, etc., would largely get their powers back every encounter - thus they can't spam them, but they know they're going to be available every fight (generally once, but some abilities, like Ki or maneuver dice, would get like 3-4 at the start of every encounter.

Full casters would be able to freely cast their spells, but they don't come back till the character takes a long rest. Martials world need this to, as this would be the way to get back HP.

Is encounter a slightly nebulous concept? Yes. But not impossible to adjudicate. My first impression would be "if you're in initiative order, you're in an encounter." Outside of combat, characters would have the abilities and they could be used more or less at will (they're not fighting anyway - make sure there's no healing or other resource-granting ability and you're golden).

I really love the feel of this over short rest abilities for martials - they can count on always have the features that make them interesting to play while not giving them to ability to just use it over and over, plus it gets rid of annoying short rest-based classes, (which never seem to get enough short rests).

What do yah think?

[Jak]

I rather liked this about Pathfinder.

Per encounter sounds great for monk and warlock.

Though, it would be a huge buff to fighters, as they could action surge and second wind every fight.

[Kane0]

Full casters would be able to freely cast their spells, but they don't come back till the character takes a long rest.

Is encounter a slightly nebulous concept? Yes. But not impossible to adjudicate. My first impression would be "if you're in initiative order, you're in an encounter." Outside of combat, characters would have the abilities and they could be used more or less at will (they're not fighting anyway - make sure there's no healing or other resource-granting ability and you're golden).


What about Warlocks? Can they cast for example Invisibility pretty much whenever they want just like Misty Visions or Mask of Many Faces?

And then there's Druid Wildshape, Cleric Channel, Bard Inspiration and even Fighter Second Wind. How do you accomodate those?

[Schwann145]

Counter-proposal: remove limiting resources entirely! Infinite Rages, infinite Ki, infinite action surges, infinite spells... Just bring back hard concentration checks (instead of the practically guaranteed-successes they are in 5e). ;)

[loki_ragnarock]

Counter-Counter-Proposal

Nobody gets any abilities, everybody plays Ogres.

Just HP and an attack. No frills, just kills.

[Salmon343]

Honestly I think everyone should have encounter resources, and some daily resources. A bit of column A, a bit of column B. Just obfuscate the design so that it isn't obvious.

Spellcasters could be a bit like the warlock - single day castings of upper tier spells, per encounter (or short rest, where a short rest is less than an hour!) mid tier spells, at will low tier spells; and the tier placement would change depending on spellcaster levels.

The key problem with recharge design is that its not standardised, and there isn't a standard campaign day. So depending on the campaign style, one type of recharge design will always get shafted. Balancing the two limits encounter design. Standardise it across the board, and no matter the style, each class will be treated fairly.

[Amnestic]

5e doeshave some per encounter resources...you just need to get to level 20 (Bardic Inspiration, monk ki, sorcery points).

And some classes get infinity of them instead (Wildshape, Rage).

[Anymage]

You can have "per encounter" abilities quite easily by just shortening short rests to 5 minutes. When they were introduced in 4e they were 15 minutes, and that was reasonably short enough for everyone to expect to have all their encounter powers every encounter.

Your bigger problem will be rejiggering abilities so that nobody can be too exploitative with short rest abilities (stun monk comes immediately to mind), and ready yourself for blowback from people who insist that the fighter getting any explicitly high level powers is too "anime" for their tastes. But good luck making short rests more common and short rest abilities more relevant in future D&D.

[Kane0]

The key problem with recharge design is that its not standardised, and there isn't a standard campaign day.

Maybe best not to use that word, tends to trigger the edition war crowd.

[Tanarii]

The problem with this is it assumes encounter design for everything and/or that encounters are a standardized-ish in-game time.

What if (as many DMs do) exploration isn't an encounter? What if it is an encounter, set up as a skill challenge (with resource use bypassing certain checks automatically) but it's wrapped around other combat and non-combat encounters? What if a social encounter involves a day of negotiations interspersed with investigations and even combats?

The biggest problem is going to be non-combat resources. Especially Ki, Pact Magic, Bardic Inspiration, and Channel Divinity. Edit: And Wildshape!

[stoutstien]

Im personally not a fan of recovery on initiative because it's just too gamey. I'd rather move some resources being rechargeable quicker but in small amounts like ki coming back 1 per 5 min of meditation or a warlock getting a spell slot back if they spend 15 minutes interacting with their patron.

[Salmon343]

Maybe best not to use that word, tends to trigger the edition war crowd.

Honestly not sure which word you mean XD. I started on 4e, so its shaped my attitudes towards the game. I know it was disliked for being different, but people can still pull from all the things it did right - just learn from what it didn't as well.


Im personally not a fan of recovery on initiative because it's just too gamey. I'd rather move some resources being rechargeable quicker but in small amounts like ki coming back 1 per 5 min of meditation or a warlock getting a spell slot back if they spend 15 minutes interacting with their patron.

Anymage covers that below - shortening them has pretty much the same effect, but feels more natural


You can have "per encounter" abilities quite easily by just shortening short rests to 5 minutes. When they were introduced in 4e they were 15 minutes, and that was reasonably short enough for everyone to expect to have all their encounter powers every encounter.

Your bigger problem will be rejiggering abilities so that nobody can be too exploitative with short rest abilities (stun monk comes immediately to mind), and ready yourself for blowback from people who insist that the fighter getting any explicitly high level powers is too "anime" for their tastes. But good luck making short rests more common and short rest abilities more relevant in future D&D.

In 5e at least, I just limit short rests to two per day (and set them at 5m. It was either 5 or 10, though functionally if they got 5m respite 10m would also work). Its a little artificial, but it largely fixes things and my group doesn't mind a little gameyness.

Honestly, I'm all for raising the power floor across the board. Its more fun when you have more abilities to choose from, as you have a choice of tactics and a greater ability to influence the game at a low level. I'm currently playing an unholy sorcerer base (ish) multiclass in a 3.5 game, and having a lot more spells to play with is a lot more fun. If every class could have that degree of variability, then battles would be a lot more interesting.

I prefer an encounter bases design rather than daily, as it makes 5m work days more viable. With a lower ratio of daily to encounter powers, the power boost you get from only having one encounter is a lot smaller, thus its easier for the DM to balance. Whereas if its the other way around, it can quickly swing out of control.

[Tanarii]

Honestly not sure which word you mean XD.
"Recharge" :smallyuk: It isn't a video game and PCs aren't batteries.

Edit: Actually, it probably was the word "standardized" lol

[Amechra]

"Recharge" :smallyuk: It isn't a video game and PCs aren't batteries.

In your game, maybe.

[Amnestic]

PCs aren't batteries.


Correct. Monsters are batteries, which is why Recharge is a monster feature.

PCs, on the other hand, are wallets, and the spell slots they spend are dollar dollar bills, y'all.

[Salmon343]

"Recharge" :smallyuk: It isn't a video game and PCs aren't batteries.

Edit: Actually, it probably was the word "standardized" lol

But everything already recharges...long rest or short rest recharge, X times per recharge. They've just hidden the language to make it feel more natural.

Standardised I can understand, that's less language and a more a difference in game design.

[Rynjin]

It's pretty easy to implement. Any actual ability that recharges on a Short Rest recharges at the start of the next encounter (as long as at least a minute has passed), similar to a Tome of Battle/Path of War Maneuver.

Resource pools (Ki, etc.) could potentially recharge on a Short Rest still. Dealer's choice on whether Maneuver dice count as one or the other; I'd lean toward the former.

[stoutstien]

Honestly not sure which word you mean XD. I started on 4e, so its shaped my attitudes towards the game. I know it was disliked for being different, but people can still pull from all the things it did right - just learn from what it didn't as well.



Anymage covers that below - shortening them has pretty much the same effect, but feels more natural



In 5e at least, I just limit short rests to two per day (and set them at 5m. It was either 5 or 10, though functionally if they got 5m respite 10m would also work). Its a little artificial, but it largely fixes things and my group doesn't mind a little gameyness.

Honestly, I'm all for raising the power floor across the board. Its more fun when you have more abilities to choose from, as you have a choice of tactics and a greater ability to influence the game at a low level. I'm currently playing an unholy sorcerer base (ish) multiclass in a 3.5 game, and having a lot more spells to play with is a lot more fun. If every class could have that degree of variability, then battles would be a lot more interesting.

I prefer an encounter bases design rather than daily, as it makes 5m work days more viable. With a lower ratio of daily to encounter powers, the power boost you get from only having one encounter is a lot smaller, thus its easier for the DM to balance. Whereas if its the other way around, it can quickly swing out of control.

The big difference is moving away from the all or nothing nature the game has. It really just acts like an illusion of choice. where if you had to decide to help search for the trigger to open a secret passage or regain a few ki is much more interesting.

I'm actually slowly working towards putting every class on an independent structure as far as resources and their recovery. That way each class will have a unique relationship to the game as it changes rather than just a few yes/no switches.

[KorvinStarmast]

Just bring back hard concentration checks (instead of the practically guaranteed-successes they are in 5e). ;) My paladin disagrees with you. (last week) He had magic weapon up for one round and lost it on the next round having taken less than 10 HP of damage.

Nobody gets any abilities, everybody plays Ogres.

Just HP and an attack. No frills, just kills. Rock'em Sock'em robots, medieval Grimm Fairy Tale style. :smallsmile:

PCs, on the other hand, are wallets, and the spell slots they spend are dollar dollar bills, y'all. Which reminds of the risks of going to a place where you need to slip dollar bills into the medusa's g-string ... :smalleek: ... and the ale tends to be overpriced. :smallyuk:

[Petelo4f]

You can have "per encounter" abilities quite easily by just shortening short rests to 5 minutes. When they were introduced in 4e they were 15 minutes, and that was reasonably short enough for everyone to expect to have all their encounter powers every encounter.

Your bigger problem will be rejiggering abilities so that nobody can be too exploitative with short rest abilities (stun monk comes immediately to mind), and ready yourself for blowback from people who insist that the fighter getting any explicitly high level powers is too "anime" for their tastes. But good luck making short rests more common and short rest abilities more relevant in future D&D.

Stun Monk would finally be a functional build, since it could actually use its abilities in every combat, and probably still on the low end of the power scale compared to what the other short rest classes would get.

[KorvinStarmast]

Bring back per encounter resources This is not by default a bad idea (13th age does something like this, cribbed from 4e) but you need to rebuild the game from the ground up to do this. Slapping it on with a patch now is going to open loopholes (or more loopholes than already exist).
Maybe a 6e proposal.

[Chronos]

I agree with Tanarii, that encounter resources are a terrible design, because encounters aren't discrete and well-defined. Even with combat, it's not always clear when one encounter ends and another begins: If you're fighting some enemies, and some of them flee, and you chase after them and eventually catch up, is that a new encounter? What if you catch up because they reached reinforcements? What if, while you're chasing them, you happen to meet another, unrelated set of enemies? 5e at least attempted to define this by "When you roll initiative", but that's not really a solution, because then you have to ask "Well, should I roll a new initiative in this situation?". Ordinarily, the answer to that question wouldn't matter much, but if rolling initiative gets you more resources, then it does matter.

And that's just with combat encounters. Some folks tend to forget the existence of non-combat encounters, but they're a part of the game, too, and sometimes a very big part.

Short rests do actually work: If you have enough time to spend X amount of time catching your breath or whatever, then your abilities recharge. At this point we can quibble about what amount of time works best (like others have said, our group usually uses 5-minute short rests, but a limited number per day), but whatever we choose, it's clear whether your resources recharge or not.

[Skrum]

Determining when an encounter starts and ends is, with everything in dnd, ultimately up to the dm to decide. But 99% percent of the time, rolling initiative is the beginning of the encounter, and when there's no reason to be in initiative any more is the end. In the "combat that turns into a chase scene that turns into more combat," I would be inclined to call that the same encounter - if my map was very large, and the chase scene was simulated through turns.

I could also easily see this being done combat, skill challenge, combat, in which case I'd call it two different encounters (giving the players back their encounter powers when initiative was rolled the second time). Since I'm the dm, I'd balance the foes based on which way I decided to do it.

Some abilities would have to (obviously) be down-powered or reduced in uses to be appropriate for encounter-based frequency. Some of the common ones, just for example -

Rage (1 per encounter, but maybe it lasts 3 rounds? I'd use this baseline for other buff-style abilities too, like Giant's Might)
Maneuvers 3 per
Ki 4 (probably even 5) per
Warlock spells 1 per
Action surge 1 per
Wild shape 1 per

Some abilities, like second wind, I think are much more appropriate for long rest recovery (though I'd buff second wind if it only came back on a long rest - like 1d10 + twice fighter level).

Doing something like this would 1) buff non-full-casters pretty significantly, and 2) give them their own distinct flavor, and 3) at least IMO, more accurately represent martial techniques. A character's best move can't just be spammed but "sorry, I can't do the cool thing again, I did it 5 hours ago" feels particularly clunky and artificial for classes that are supposed to be fighting with weapons and physical skill (sorry I'm not explaining this right, but I feel it in my bones).

[Tanarii]

Encounters aren't just combat, and not all of them use initiative. And any encounter that expects the use of some resources is a Medium encounter. So unlimited use in non-combats wouldn't be appropriate.

It worked in 4e because most people, including official play and other published adventures, ran it as a combat simulator, with 3-4 combats that easily led to one another in a linear fashion with almost no exploration per 3-4 hour session.

[Salmon343]

Encounters aren't just combat, and not all of them use initiative. And any encounter that expects the use of some resources is a Medium encounter. So unlimited use in non-combats wouldn't be appropriate.

It worked in 4e because most people, including official play and other published adventures, ran it as a combat simulator, with 3-4 combats that easily led to one another in a linear fashion with almost no exploration per 3-4 hour session.

That's not my experience with 4e at all - it wasn't just combat, there was roleplay, exploration, the full works. In fact, elements like skill challenges are something that my group has brought over into 5e as well, and encounter powers were often used in more than just combat - there was a whole suite of them dedicated to it, utility powers.

Initiative as power recharge does have its limitations, but that's not how it worked in 4e. As a group we didn't really stick to a time of rest needed to recharge powers, it was just obvious what was an encounter and what wasn't, both in and out of combat. I personally prefer 5 minutes of downtime to be the dividing line between encounters.

[PhoenixPhyre]

The very simplest method would be to say
* Short rests take 5 minutes and can be done while moving, as long as you're not sprinting.
* You're limited to X short rests / long rest.

And then actually pay attention--if you're searching the bodies and moving carefully, the interval between most fights/rooms is of order minutes. Which means you can generally afford to take a 5-minute short rest there. Sure, that means you're not one of the ones searching the bodies, but you're not forcing the party to wait for you.

Simplest value for X is 2. But adjustable for different parties' tastes.

This still becomes degenerate if you only have 1 encounter per day. But everything does, because then it's all about how fast you can nova, not really how many resources you have (barbarians, despite being 100% LR dependent, are still just as boned in a one-big-solo-encounter day as a fighter is, because rage is a toggle, not an actual spender like a Divine Smite is).