Combat sucks... for the DM. Tips to make it less so?

[sithlordnergal]

Sleep and Rests are different which is why you can't ignore the preceding sentence where it says the consequence of being sleep deprived are the section you quoted. It's actually quite simple, if you are sleep deprived you follow the rules in the section you quoted if you aren't sleep deprived you don't. Just like you don't follow the crunch of extreme heat that says "without access to drinkable water must succeed on a Constitution saving throw at the end of each hour or gain one level of exhaustion. The DC is 5 for the first hour and increases by 1 for each additional hour." unless you are in a situation where you face extreme heat.

So the preceding line that you ignored "If you want to account for the effects of sleep deprivation on characters and creatures, use these rules." tells us to only use the the rules when suffering sleep deprivation. And as you said Sleep and Rest are different.

The fact that sleep and rests are different is precisely why that preceding sentence doesn't actually matter when it comes to those rules. Doesn't matter if you're sleep deprived or not, all that matters is if you completed a Long Rest or not. If you have completed a Long Rest, you don't have to make the save. If you haven't completed a Long Rest, but you did sleep, then you don't have to make the save.

Same holds true with the extreme heat. The crunch actually states the exact temperature that the game considers to be extreme heat, "When the temperature is at or above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, a creature exposed to the heat and without access to drinkable water must succeed on a Constitution saving throw at the end of each hour or gain one level of exhaustion. The DC is 5 for the first hour and increases by 1 for each additional hour." So if you're traveling at, say, 99.99 degrees Fahrenheit, those rules don't come up, they only apply when its 100 degrees or higher.


EDIT: I guess it comes down to if you feel there's no distinction between Fluff and Crunch. If you feel the sleep deprivation sentence holds just as much weight as the sentence talking about DCs, then yeah, I can see how you would run it that way. Personally, that part looks like fluff to me, with the only relevant crunch being if you have had a Long Rest or not.

[Anymage]

How would you teach them not to nova?

Telling them doesn't seem to work.

Two of the easiest ways are to put them in a dungeon that resets or even gets harder if they leave to come back tomorrow, and more generally where giving the other side a full day uninterrupted means that you basically lost.

Unfortunately if they're like a lot of players I've met, this will result in escalations. They'll scuttle the mission rather than risk having to press on without rests. And while there are ways to penalize them for incomplete missions, that will just result in grouchiness and likely passive aggressiveness. At which point it becomes a table issue. And while there are a couple of ways to still get the players fired up by attacking their character sheets (finding the macguffin they need to cure a disease/break a curse that lowers their max HP each day should give them a greater sense of urgency), playing such plots with any regularity starts to get into antagonistic DM territory.

[Easy e]

This is a very controversial tip.

Ditch 90% of it.
- Ditch stat blocks
- Ditch HP tracking
- Ditch rolling for enemies

Instead, know why any combat that you are having is relevant, and make sure the foes are doing things to make the combat more interesting, raising the stakes, and making the Players think about the consequences of failure beyond simply dying or losing resources.

Then, simply react to what the players are doing.

- If they have a good idea and a good roll, give them a good result.
- If they have a boring idea, and a good roll, give them adequate results.
- If they have bad ideas, and good rolls, give them acceptable results.
- If they have good idea and bad rolls, give them adequate results.
- Boring ideas and bad rolls, give them less than ideal results.
- If they have bad ideas and bad rolls, things get worse.

This makes things pretty easy, as you just leverage your GM powers and players ideas to make an interesting combat, instead of letting the RNG and stats pin you down.

[Pex]

You don't actually need an entire combat, just a single round. =D Longbows have a 600ft range. Snipe a party from that distance, have them roll initative to start combat, have the enemy dash away and end combat. Congrats, long rest has been interrupted, they no longer gain the benefits of it

Keep doing that the players will say they start over with their long rest and not do anything the entire next game day if they have to. If the bad guys win, so be it. Campaign over. Next game please. You fight the player passive aggressively, they fight back. Stop being at war with your players. It's an out of game problem so handle it out of game.

[sithlordnergal]

Keep doing that the players will say they start over with their long rest and not do anything the entire next game day if they have to. If the bad guys win, so be it. Campaign over. Next game please. You fight the player passive aggressively, they fight back. Stop being at war with your players. It's an out of game problem so handle it out of game.

See, my players have tried that before, but quickly realized they were going to fail the campaign. Now, there was an overarching doom clock to force them to move as well, because it was ToA. But as a result, they had to go into the final dungeon with a few levels of exhaustion. Maybe it won't happen with every group, but my player's desire to beat the campaign ended up being stronger than their desire to go into the final dungeon with full HP and no exhaustion.

It can seem like DM vs Player with how harsh it is, but it does work in my experience. Players will grumble a bit about having levels of exhaustion, or being low on resources. But if you're a skilled DM, you know how to push a party right to the brink, with all their resources drained and their hp left in the single digits without a party wipe by the end of a dungeon. And I mean, if your players are so insistent on getting their long rest that they'd rather lose the entire campaign:

1) Do talk to them

and

2) Next campaign involves the consequences of their first party losing. Their new party gets to clean up their old party's mess, and their new characters can know the world ended because the old party wasn't willing to get up and save the world.


EDIT: Also, those kinds of ambush tactics are PERFECT for making a party feel like they're not safe. Need to make a place feel hostile? Shoot them occasionally while they travel from 600ft away. Chip away their HP little by little, interrupt their rests, make them have to get creative with their safety.

[CapnWildefyr]

Regarding the issue of too many rests, Whoever is having the problem with too many long rests needs to talk to the players and find out why, find out the root cause. Maybe you've just done too good a job making them paranoid. Maybe they think they're too weak. Maybe they always take a rest in the bottom half of the hour. Any solution has to revolve around why they are always taking those longs rests. Otherwise this forum can speculate all day and offer all kinds of conflicting advice, all of which will suffer from varying degrees of not solving your problem.

You might find out you just need to tone down the encounter difficulty or something else simple, like reminding them that you're not trying to kill them, only make them think you are. If the issue is that they just have an irrational fear of being down some resource, then I think you'll have to just force it.

There have been generals with some great 'philosophical' quotes for this very thing, like (paraphrasing here, I can't recall them exactly or who said them):
"It's about who gets there firstest with the mostest." and something like the thought "You gotta fight with the army you've got."

That sort of thing. (Although I just looked up who said the first one and he was... "not a good role model." Won a lot, though.)

[Pex]

See, my players have tried that before, but quickly realized they were going to fail the campaign. Now, there was an overarching doom clock to force them to move as well, because it was ToA. But as a result, they had to go into the final dungeon with a few levels of exhaustion. Maybe it won't happen with every group, but my player's desire to beat the campaign ended up being stronger than their desire to go into the final dungeon with full HP and no exhaustion.

It can seem like DM vs Player with how harsh it is, but it does work in my experience. Players will grumble a bit about having levels of exhaustion, or being low on resources. But if you're a skilled DM, you know how to push a party right to the brink, with all their resources drained and their hp left in the single digits without a party wipe by the end of a dungeon. And I mean, if your players are so insistent on getting their long rest that they'd rather lose the entire campaign:

1) Do talk to them

and

2) Next campaign involves the consequences of their first party losing. Their new party gets to clean up their old party's mess, and their new characters can know the world ended because the old party wasn't willing to get up and save the world.


EDIT: Also, those kinds of ambush tactics are PERFECT for making a party feel like they're not safe. Need to make a place feel hostile? Shoot them occasionally while they travel from 600ft away. Chip away their HP little by little, interrupt their rests, make them have to get creative with their safety.

Or the players walk and find a new DM who isn't so adversarial. Some players can be vindictive, continue playing, and let the game world crash and burn in story then find a new DM when the game ends with either the BBEG winning or DM quits in frustration and anger. Who said they had to play the so called next campaign dealing with consequences of the party's failure? The DM doesn't always win.

The DM is supposed to play with the players, not against them.

[sithlordnergal]

Or the players walk and find a new DM who isn't so adversarial. Some players can be vindictive, continue playing, and let the game world crash and burn in story then find a new DM when the game ends with either the BBEG winning or DM quits in frustration and anger. Who said they had to play the so called next campaign dealing with consequences of the party's failure? The DM doesn't always win.

The DM is supposed to play with the players, not against them.

I'll be honest, I've never found a party that is so insistant on getting long rests that they'd rather walk than not get one. Then again, I also make it pretty clear that I go all in for hard mode as it were, though I've never caused a TPK. So it does help when they have expectation of it being dangerous but not deadly.

Heck, my last encounter had the party fighting a Skull Lord. Only the Skull Lord was behind an Ogre Zombie wearing Plate Armor and a Shield in a 10ft wide hallway. The Ogre Zombie only ever took the dodge action, creating a very effective barrier that the party couldn't pass, and the hallway happened to be made in a way to allow a pair of Bodaks to safely attack the party with their sight attack and auras. Every single player went down at least once, a few twice, and I made sure to Chill Touch the players with the lowest HP to prevent healing. No deaths or TPK by the way, they made good use of the only room that granted them full cover. And they're only what, level 9 or 10.

When the players are used to that kind of encounter, I guess being sniped at from a distance becomes par for the course. XD

[Throne12]

I don't know if someone already said this or not. But stop doing boring combat where the play and npcs are just rolling to hit each other. Make the battle dynamic and important. May be there's a fight in a room with Geysers and you and a play got to roll a 6d before any attack to see if a Geyser go off Interrupting the attack. Or yall are fighting in a middle of a blizzard and everyone is taking 1point of cold damage from the wind and snow and you have to fight the wind and snow to move around. Even have gusts push people around a bit.

The point is I hardly ever see DMs us Terran and weather in there fights. Now this is adding to the DM's plate. But we can at the same time offload Somethings. Give your players monsters to run. If you got multiple monsters give some to the players to run. Also give the play a bit of Instructions on wht you want to monsters to do. Players are a resource DM'S don't use at all.

[Demonslayer666]

Rest only when necessary is not what I would consider a heroic, feeling powerful in combat all the time is much more a heroic mindset for me. But regardless of the terms/definitions if players want to be powerful all the time in combat then it's pretty clear they would prefer EH resting. But it also seems strange to me that you would say they care a lot about the story when previously you said they would take an entire year to LR if that's what it would take to recover their resources.

The length of the rest is irrelevant. Even with EH, when the party blasts through an easy combat and insists they need to rest, it's irresponsible grandstanding and far from heroic.

They could certainly accomplish more in an adventuring day period if they relied more on cantrips and basic attacks rather than squandering resources. Doing more is more heroic rather than sitting around doing nothing.

It's an out of game problem so handle it out of game. ...

During the game in an it counts fight of a random encounter give a gentle reminder not to rush using the big guns. When it is a tougher fight, give a remark that some big guns should be used here.

Handling it out of game hasn't worked. They still like to show off.

I will try to telegraph easier fights better, and warn them that overextending could be bad for them, or better yet, figure out a way to reward them more for being judicious with their resources.