D&D 5E Resting and the frikkin' Elephant in the Room

[Hussar]

Bounuses are bounded, so the range of meaningful DCs is limited, once you get to setting a DC, that is. By the time a DC comes into it, the DMs already made one ruling, in calling for the check at all.

So, yeah, rulings not rules.

But, again, that's not any different than before. The DM always had the option of calling for a check or not. And, in 4e, the DM is rather encouraged to only make checks when it mattered.

Look at the evolution of jumping.

In any edition, the player declares that he wants to jump across a 10 foot gap. In AD&D, the DM basically set any DC he felt like - there were no real guidelines at all. In 3e, the jump check DC was dictated by the mechanics, but, if the PC's skill was greater than the DC, then no check was required - it automatically succeeded. Same in 4e. Now, in 5e, there's no check at all. The PC jumps his Str score (presuming a 10 foot running start). The DM has no real say in things at all. Player says, "I jump X feet" and he does.

I honestly think you're overplaying this hand. Rulings not rules refers to 5e's backing off the notion of "Rules for Everything". But, that doesn't mean that it's not still pretty solidly a rules heavy game with rules for most things. It's not a case that 5e is somehow rejecting any rule set. In fact, I find that 5e follows 4e rules philosophy pretty closely - basically the notion that rules absent is not the same as rules light. 5e DOES have a rule for pretty much everything. It's just in the corner cases that 5e largely diverges from 3e and hews closer to 4e in having rules that work most of the time and then relying on the DM plus a healthy dose of guidance to cover the rest.

 

[CapnZapp]

Any speculation as to the point of it? Where is the value in denying DMs the obvious tool for interrupting long rests!?

Generally speaking that is indeed the question.

Why set up a game with lots of thought on resource allocation, and the difference between long rest classes and short rest classes and 6 encounters a day...

...and then piss it all away by making it nigh impossible to impose any consequences for taking those rests...

Unless you feel like being a prick DM (taking away the spells, changing the rules on rest interruption, etc)...

...or invent a new time-crunch for each and every frigging quest.

Why not simply add mechanical optional variants that would once and for all settle the issue, so that there's a real cost to taking a rest that the players get to balance against the risk of pressing onwards even with depleted spell slots and hit dice...

...that is indeed the question...!



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[CapnZapp]

The incomplete, scattershot, and sometimes jarringly imbalanced 5e ruleset project was clearly overseen by a right brainer Big Story Big DM (errr "Empowered" DM) hippie, so not surprising the errata would follow the same course of slow and tortured logic, right?

(Steve turtles up waiting for the barrage of counterstrikes from label-hater hippies)

+1

I feel ya, man

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[CapnZapp]

Y'know, people keep going on and on about this "rulings not rules" thing, but, really? How often do you actually have to make a ruling on something not covered in the mechanics? We've been playing pretty regularly for the past few years and it's come up very, very rarely.

Outside of something like stealth, how often are you actually making a ruling and not referencing the rules? 5e is not exactly a rules light system.

I always took the "rulings not rules" thing to mean that DM's were empowered to change the rules. Not, there are no rules here, so, make up your own. This isn't 1e where it's largely rules absent outside of certain areas. 5e has rules that cover the majority of situations. What 5e doesn't do is worry about the corner cases. IOW, it's "Here are rules that cover 90% of the things that will come up at your table. For the other 10%, use your own judgement".

Actually you answered your own question

"How often do you actually have to make a ruling on something not covered in the mechanics?"

10% of the time, if I take your word for it...

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[clearstream]

Like the other rules (including player resources like Rope Trick, snd the staggeringly powered-up Tiny Hut) around resting, it does seem at odds with 5e's DM Empowerment and classic-feel imperatives.

Unless we acknowledge that a player-driven 5MWD is part of that classic feel? The DM is still Empowered to dial up encounters to make them challenging even to a full-rested party.

You are right that we can dial up the challenge on one encounter to test even a full-rested party. My feeling is that our expressive range then narrows as we focus on deadly encounters and alpha strikes. We lose the opportunity to also offer a series of encounters that - individually easy or medium - are collectively challenging via resource attrition. As a DM, I want to offer alpha-strikes AND opportunities for resource management because I believe that the game is richer for my players when I do that. The contrast between short-rest and long-rest features feed into that broadened expressive range. An excellent example are Warlock spell slots. At 10th level spread over 6-8 encounters between long-rests, the Warlock and Wizard enjoy parity on average number of spell slots expendable per encounter.

The 6-8 encounter guideline is then, presumably there for DMs who wish to impose it in a more linear style of campaign. For those running a sandbox and/or rewarding old-school skilled play/strategy/CaW, the issues the guidelines are meant to address - class imbalance and, particularly, encounter difficulty - are of no concern, or even desirable.

For me these are two separate issues. Whether or not we want a linear campaign, we can benefit from being able to offer a mix of individually deadly encounters and chains of debilitating encounters. Right? Separately, the sandbox campaign is something WotC have expressly acknowledged and attempted to support (OOTA, SKT). In any event, the issues with resting for a sandbox campaign relate to matching the scale. WotC's designers brushingly reference that in the DMG (Gritty Realism rest option) although I don't feel they yet state it as crisply as they need to.

 

[Tobold]

Note that class balance significantly changes in an environment that only has one deadly alpha-strike encounter between long rests.

 

[Sadras]

Unless we acknowledge that a player-driven 5MWD is part of that classic feel? The DM is still Empowered to dial up encounters to make them challenging even to a full-rested party. The 6-8 encounter guideline is then, presumably there for DMs who wish to impose it in a more linear style of campaign. For those running a sandbox and/or rewarding old-school skilled play/strategy/CaW, the issues the guidelines are meant to address - class imbalance and, particularly, encounter difficulty - are of no concern, or even desirable.

Unlike @vonklaude I agree with your assessment here. I have tried both old-school play as well as the 6-8 encounter guideline. In order to create the 6-8 encounters the play was indeed linear, or more railroady, not used as a pejorative. I'm not saying that is the only way to do it - but that is what it felt like to me.

 

[clearstream]

Unlike @vonklaude I agree with your assessment here. I have tried both old-school play as well as the 6-8 encounter guideline. In order to create the 6-8 encounters the play was indeed linear, or more railroady, not used as a pejorative. I'm not saying that is the only way to do it - but that is what it felt like to me.

I can hopefully clarify. Is it right that your analysis is based around an observation that 6-8 encounters between long-rests will need to be linear/railroading whereas a single encounter won't be? My own experience is quite different. I'd say that both cases can be linear/railroading, and both cases can be open/sandbox. It might come down to choices in planning and at the table.

I think you are not saying there is anything intrinsically about 6-8 encounters between long-rests that forces linear/railroading. Only that in your experience, that is what happened. In terms of progressing our understanding of the game, could I suggest that what matters right now is the former. If there is not anything intrinsic involved, then we can proceed to a state where we can have the number of encounters the game balance overall envisions, without committing to railroading. The two are not wedded.

 

[Sadras]

I can hopefully clarify. Is it right that your analysis is based around an observation that 6-8 encounters between long-rests will need to be linear/railroading whereas a single encounter won't be? My own experience is quite different. I'd say that both cases can be linear/railroading, and both cases can be open/sandbox. It might come down to choices in planning and at the table.

Agreed, whether having 1 encounter or 6-8 encounters, both may be linear.
From my point of view it is certainly harder to justify 6-8 encounters per adventuring day over a long campaign without forcing the linear issue. Just thinking about it logically:
I HAVE to have 6-8 encounters per adventuring day no matter what choices the PCs make OR I can have have AS many or AS little encounters as the adventuring day requires according to the PCs actions. What inherently strikes you as more linear style play?

I'm not saying its impossible to create 6-8 encounters via sandbox but over a course of a campaign your average DM will create linear sessions to fill his encounter quota.

It might be flawed, but this is the way I see it:
AD&D balanced classes and races over levels 1-20
5e balances classes over 6-8 encounters.

 

[Lanefan]

Look at the evolution of jumping.

In any edition, the player declares that he wants to jump across a 10 foot gap. In AD&D, the DM basically set any DC he felt like - there were no real guidelines at all.

Or just asked if you had a Jump spell memorized...

In 3e, the jump check DC was dictated by the mechanics, but, if the PC's skill was greater than the DC, then no check was required - it automatically succeeded. Same in 4e. Now, in 5e, there's no check at all. The PC jumps his Str score (presuming a 10 foot running start). The DM has no real say in things at all. Player says, "I jump X feet" and he does.

Which gets into an auto-succeed/auto-fail issue. This is one place where a roll-under mechanic would work really well: your maximum jump distance is, let's say, your strength score; and your minumum distance might be half that (so, auto-succeed if jump distance is at or below your minimum). So roll d20. If you match or get below your strength score, you jump the maximum. If you roll too high, each point you miss by is 1 foot less that you jump, until your minimum is reached as you'll always go that far.

So, to jump a 10' gap - anyone with strength 20 will always make it. Anyone with strength 9 or less will never make it. But if your strength is between 10 and 19 there's some uncertainty, which is always better than auto-pass/auto-fail.

Lan-"and what I suggest here is - though less bad - still a long way from perfect"-efan