Broken NDAs or Elaborate Trolls?

Herremann the Wise · Feb 16, 2012

hayek said:
new player: "I'm kinda hurt let's take a rest, I get back some of my hitpoints, right?"
dm: "well, what kind of rest are you taking, a 10-minute short rest, 1-hour short rest, or an 8-hour extended rest. you have 2 of the short rests per day, but only 1 of the 1-hour, that's the one that gives you back half your hp."
new player: "well what does the other short rest do?"
dm: "a 10-minute short rest will give you back your level in hitpoints"
new player: "so that's 1 hitpoint? or am i missing something?"
dm: "yeah, 1 hitpoint."
new player: "ummm... so why would i ever do that one? i want the 1-hour rest, how many of those do i get again? can i trade in 2 of my 10-minute rests for a 1-hour rest or something? what's the point of the 10-minute short rest if we never use it?"

better to have a nice, easy, simple rule for the basic game that actually adds something to the game

I could easily imagine such a scenario at some tables. Perhaps though we are only seeing a small slice of the picture here? One of the most comical things in 3e was the heal skill standard action. To have one character stabilize another in combat after moving up to 30 feet in 6 seconds... We comically used to roleplay this as the "kick the intestines back in" standard action. It was ridiculous. 4e took this even further with the Warlord yelling at the cowardly bastard on the ground to get up off his unconscious arse and show some backbone... and it worked.

Perhaps though, a short rest of 10 minutes allows a mundane healer to help an injured character/party for 1d6 hit points within a somewhat more reasonable time frame? A priest with divine magic may be able to bless a character as a ritual within this time frame as well for 1d8, with the short rest being the trigger, as well as the natural limiter of how many times such things can be done for different characters. With this, that extra level's worth of hit points becomes the mathematical gravy rather than the main course of healing. That would seem a more reasonable scenario I suppose.

Its difficult to evaluate when we only have a small slice of the picture. At this point though, I see no reason not to trust the designers that they've got it sorted.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

Szatany · Feb 16, 2012

It doesn't really make sense that you can take two 10-minute effective rests per day and all the latter ones do nothing for you. If they are concerned with abuse of resting, they should make it so resting is not cumulative.
10-minute rest - you replenish your HP up to 1/3rd of your total HP*.
1 hour rest - you replenish HP up to 2/3rd of your total HP*.
8 hour rest - you replenish HP up to your full HP value*.
* - but no more than half your total HP per rest. That means that a low level character might need two or three 10-minute rests to get to his 1/3rd, if he was deep in negative HP. Resting for 1 hour will put you at 2/3rd HP, unless you were close to having 0 or had less, in which case you will need to rest 2, possibly 3 hours. For 8 hour rest, you get to maximum only if you had at least 50% hp before rest. If less, you need 16 hours to get well. If you were at negative HP, you will need 24 hours.
I think its simple and, most importantly, much harder to abuse. There is no limit to resting in this system - instead there's limit to what resting can give you. If characters expect an easy fight, it might be ok for them to take only a short rest (but that's risky). This system also ensures that no matter how hard a fight was, players will have at least 1/3rd HP during their next fight, which gives them at least a fighting chance.
Also, all resting feels effective. None of this crap:

new player: "well what does the other short rest do?"
dm: "a 10-minute short rest will give you back your level in hitpoints"
new player: "so that's 1 hitpoint? or am i missing something?"
dm: "yeah, 1 hitpoint."
new player: "ummm... so why would i ever do that one?

EDIT: A simpler version for those who don't want to deal with multiple rests one after another would be to ignore the limitation of 1/2hp max per rest. Then you have a simple rule like this:
10-minute rest - you replenish your HP up to 1/3rd of your total HP.
1 hour rest - you replenish HP up to 2/3rd of your total HP.
8 hour rest - you replenish HP up to your full HP value.

FireLance · Feb 16, 2012

An interesting thought about four rests and encounter powers (assuming they exist in some form, as an option, outside of the core rules, printed in very light and small font, in an obscure sidebar, carefully disguised and woven into the artwork, on a single page, protected by a secret page spell, so that some peoples' "fun" won't be destroyed, in 5e).

Instead of getting your encounter powers back every time you take a short rest (as in 4e. No, really. This is how they worked. I'm serious. Honest. Go check the rulebooks if you don't believe me), maybe you only get four chances per day to rest and regain your encounter powers in 5e. This means using an encounter power every encounter is no longer a no-brainer. You might get away with it if you only have four encounters per day, but you might not be able to guarantee that.

Mercurius · Feb 16, 2012

The Shadow said:
I've never understood "electrum pieces". I may be wrong, but I don't think any real culture used electrum for coinage after 300 BC or so; it's a naturally-occurring alloy whose purity can't be controlled.

Exactly - it is ridiculous, but fun Gygaxian arcana at its finest.

The Shadow said:
I'm very disappointed to learn that ability modifiers still exist; I'd gotten my hopes up.

What's wrong with ability modifiers?

Chris_Nightwing said:
Sounds like an awful lot of dice rolling..

Welcome to D&D.

avin · Feb 16, 2012

FireLance said:
An interesting thought about four rests and encounter powers (assuming they exist in some form, as an option, outside of the core rules, printed in very light and small font, in an obscure sidebar, carefully disguised and woven into the artwork, on a single page, protected by a secret page spell, so that some peoples' "fun" won't be destroyed, in 5e).

lol

Encounter Powers are alien to me, until now I find no good explanation out of the gamist world but, as an option, it should exist for those who like it.

Can we put in a separate booklet?

Mircoles · Feb 16, 2012

The return of vancian magic means that I won't be playing it.

Keefe the Thief · Feb 16, 2012

Perhaps it's GOOD vancian magic. D&D has had

vancian magic for so long, it deserves some flexible, well thought-out, flavorful and fun resource management system like that.

Li Shenron · Feb 16, 2012

The sleeping game...

Really, such mechanics reek too much of gamism for my tastes. I say, keep the usual nightly rest as the only resting way to regain health by default, and just put a paragraph in the DMG suggesting alternative rules such as short naps, long naps and whatever, and tell the DM that she's going to have to choose which and how many to allow into the campaign. Do not even suggest any fixed number of rests, or any "default" choice will simply be nonsense for the majority of gamers.

At this point, I wish the designers would consider including a suggestion for splitting everybody's HP in half:
- the upper half representing getting tired, minor scratches, "morale drops" and similar abstract things: they heal automatically and fast between encounters, and can be healed by Warlords by shouting and Bards by singing in the middle of a battle
- the lower half representing real physical damage: they heal slowly (and NOT fully) with a long uninterrupted nightly rest, or otherwise with magic

The rest of the leaked information does neither excite me or bother me, except perhaps using HD for critical hits... doesn't make sense to me. Why should a robust, defensive class be also good at striking, and viceversa? Dwarven defenders and Swashbucklers?

Bohemian Ear Spoon · Feb 16, 2012

Li Shenron said:
The sleeping game...

...short naps, long naps and whatever...

Dirt naps?

pauljathome · Feb 16, 2012

Plane Sailing said:
Hey, it's d&d... It's ALL about the dice rolling man!

Ah. And since they're planning to get to the core of what D&D is we now know what dndNext REALLY IS and get the advertising sound bite:

DndNext : Even more dice rolling than ever before.