D&D 5E Decoupling [healing + resource recovery] from 'resting'

[Flamestrike]

Im noticing a lot of DMs are frustrated/ confused with the expected [rest/ encounter] paradigm of 5E. Many are finding the expected [6-8 encounter/ 2 short rest] adventuring day between long rests to be too much of a grind, or miss the fact the game [and the classes] balances properly around this expectation. Others are finding it difficult to enforce due to nova tactics by players.

The DMG presents options for rest variants [longer rests in particular] to cater for this very problem, but many DMs are still put off by this variant for various reasons. While longer rests may be appropriate for adventuring days featuring 0-2 encounters [such as wilderness travel] they slow down your average dungeon crawl immensely. An option put forward has been variable rests; in 'wilderness exploration/ travel' mode, your PCs rely on the longer rest variant. Once the game 'zooms in' to the dungeon, where longer ADs are expected, normal rest pacing kicks in.

This might address some of the problems but is clunky in a few ways.

I was thinking; would a 'milestone' system of resource recovery/ healing be a solution? Effectively decoupling the recharge of resources [spell slots, action surge, ki etc] and [hit dice and healing] from actual physical resting. I was thinking something like:

• All PCs get the benefit of a long rest recharge [HP refresh, HD and long rest resources recharge] automatically every six encounters [or when otherwise OK'd by the DM, such as at important breaks in the story].
• All PCs get the benefit of a short rest recharge [the ability to spend HD to heal, recover short rest resources] every two encounters [or when otherwise allowed by the DM]

The advantages of this system are apparent. It eliminates nova tactics, removes the 5 minute AD, enforces class and encounter balance and is transparent to the players. It also gives the DM the flexibility to add in an extra short rest or long rest as dictated by the story or the situation [such as when the players have had a session of really bad luck and are limping through to the next encounter].

The milestone system is one that works in many games, and 5Es resource management/ encounter design/ rest paradigm seem perfectly suited to it. The only problem seems to be simulationist arguments against [why is variable healing and recharge happening from an 'in game' perspective].

Anyone have any thoughts on the above proposal, or any suggestions for a plausible 'in game' reason a DM could use to explain such variable healing/ recharging resources?

I was thinking maybe: 'The PCs have the eye of the Gods.The Gods reward their efforts to advance the saga' or something like that.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

The milestone system is one that works in many games, and 5Es resource management/ encounter design/ rest paradigm seem perfectly suited to it. The only problem seems to be simulationist arguments against [why is variable healing and recharge happening from an 'in game' perspective].

Anyone have any thoughts on the above proposal, or any suggestions for a plausible 'in game' reason a DM could use to explain such variable healing/ recharging resources?

I was thinking maybe: 'The PCs have the eye of the Gods.The Gods reward their efforts to advance the saga' or something like that.

You've made a thoughtful proposition, and I like how you're trying to look at it from different angles. Having a basically simulationist approach to D&D myself, that was indeed my first thought as I read your post. I'm not a big fan of ad hoc in-universe explanations for game mechanics. I would much rather see the rules reflect what's happening in the game world than the other way around. So an explanation like this is probably not for me. I can't see anything objectively wrong with it, though.

One suggestion I might make, if you're concerned about the opinion of people like me: it may sound paradoxical, but don't try so hard to explain it. The game has a lot of abstractions which we all just accept as abstractions, but which would sound idiotic if the writers bent over backwards giving in-universe reasons for them. Take hit points. They don't really make a lot of sense. But in just presenting the rule with a brief handwave of "These sort of represent how well you're doing in the fight", players can imagine them however they feel best or just ignore them and focus on other parts of the simulation. If they tried to say something like "Hit points represent the strength of a heroic energy field that surrounds you and protects you from real injury", it wouldn't work nearly as well. It would only draw extra attention to the unrealism of the rule.

On the mechanical front, I do think there's at least one issue that may or may not sink your proposal, but needs to be considered. And that is that this milestone system takes control of "recharges" out of the hands of players. In standard D&D, there is often a great deal of tension between the option of continuing to explore versus falling back to rest. It's a classic "press-your-luck" mechanic, in board game parlance. With recharges, there's no tension at all, because rests don't do anything; "we press on" is the only option. At worst, you may see players trying to take back some of this control in counterintuitive ways: "We're pretty beat up, so why don't we just leave the dungeon and go 'encounter' bobcats in the forest until we hit our milestone?"

 

[Flamestrike]

On the mechanical front, I do think there's at least one issue that may or may not sink your proposal, but needs to be considered. And that is that this milestone system takes control of "recharges" out of the hands of players. In standard D&D, there is often a great deal of tension between the option of continuing to explore versus falling back to rest. It's a classic "press-your-luck" mechanic, in board game parlance. With recharges, there's no tension at all, because rests don't do anything; "we press on" is the only option. At worst, you may see players trying to take back some of this control in counterintuitive ways: "We're pretty beat up, so why don't we just leave the dungeon and go 'encounter' bobcats in the forest until we hit our milestone?"

This could be fixed by milestones decoupled from encounters. 'When the PCs finish level one of the dungeon, they get the benefits of a long rest'

You could then couple that long rest with 8 hours sleep as an additional requirement.

So when designing adventures, you have certain fixed milsetones where the PCs get the benefits of either a short or long rest.

 

[Jester David]

I like my simulationist perspective and don't like the gamist connection to encounters.
But aside from that personal problem, there are some catches.

First, you need to define what an encounter is. No, really.
Does an encounter they talk their way out of count? Does that encounter where they ambush a bad guy then roll well on initiative and wipe the floor with no spent resources?
What about traps? Climbing a mountain causing exhaustion? A sudden storm. There's lots of ways to burn through resources outside of a fight.

A set number of encounters also doesn't accommodate bad luck. Sometimes you roll poo and the DM's dice are on fire, and you churn through resources.
This is especially true in situations where you might need to stop and prepare a greater restoration spell after an intellect devourer or a medusa or a banshee. With an encounter based rest system, you have to keep going even after you know you shouldn't (or can't).

 

[Tony Vargas]

I was thinking; would a 'milestone' system of resource recovery/ healing be a solution? Effectively decoupling the recharge of resources [spell slots, action surge, ki etc] and [hit dice and healing] from actual physical resting. I was thinking something like:

• All PCs get the benefit of a long rest recharge [HP refresh, HD and long rest resources recharge] automatically every six encounters [or when otherwise OK'd by the DM, such as at important breaks in the story].
• All PCs get the benefit of a short rest recharge [the ability to spend HD to heal, recover short rest resources] every two encounters [or when otherwise allowed by the DM]

The advantages of this system are apparent. It eliminates nova tactics, removes the 5 minute AD, enforces class and encounter balance and is transparent to the players.

That's very close to what 13A does. There's a recharge after every encounter, and a 'full heal-up' every 4th encounter (or when the DM sasys so). (In essence, 5e encounters are 'half' a 13A or 4e encounter, in the interest of fast combat.) 13A also lets the party choose to rest, but they take a 'campaign loss,' which could be a helpful option if the 'verisimilitude' of such an arbitrary system were questions.

Anyone have any thoughts on the above proposal, or any suggestions for a plausible 'in game' reason a DM could use to explain such variable healing/ recharging resources?

If you map recharges to story milestones, they can make sense as opportunities to rest, gaining supernatural aid, or resurgent morale as a result of accomplishing something important.
If it's strictly every other encounter, not so much, it'd just be a mechanical system-artifact without a hardwired in-world meaning, kinda like hps, rounds, initiative, and the like.

First, you need to define what an encounter is. No, really.

This being 5e, you'd need to rule whether any given challenge (including an actual, combat encounter) counted towards 'earning' that next recharge. No hard-and-fast definition is required. It'd end up being pretty arbitrary and DM-driven (which isn't exactly out of character for 5e)....

A set number of encounters also doesn't accommodate bad luck.
This is especially true in situations where you might need to stop and prepare a greater restoration spell after an intellect devourer or a medusa or a banshee.

That's an issue with that sort of monster, itself (or any sort of only-one-solution challenge). If the party doesn't have anyone with greater restoration on their list, for instance, you have an even bigger problem.

With an encounter based rest system, you have to keep going even after you know you shouldn't (or can't).

Which is why the 13A 'campaign loss' mechanic isn't a bad one.

 

[Blue]

13th Age handles this more mechanically as well. You get the benefits of a 5e Long Rest after every 4 encounters. DM can give it early if the encounters are particularly difficult, and the players can take it early if they are willing to suffer a campaign setback. So you don't throw resource spending way off if you do three encounters on a week long cross-country trek, nor if you do a marathon in a dungeon.

It's helpful to keep players engaged with it until they get used to it though. For example, asking players "WHY wasn't last night's Inn stay a good one". Could be anything from bedbugs to barking dogs (a clue to a break-in?), or a massive drinking/fiddling contest that lasted until dawn and left the characters with some new friends and rivals if they could just remember their names.

I was initially very skeptical that it would break immersion but it's been really working perfectly for a year and a half.

EDIT: Ninja'd by the esteemed [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION]

 

[I'm A Banana]

Anyone have any thoughts on the above proposal, or any suggestions for a plausible 'in game' reason a DM could use to explain such variable healing/ recharging resources?

There's two rather significant downsides (that might not be a big deal at any one particular table).

First, this system is meta as all get out. There's no in-world logic that says that killing 6 waves of goblins makes my sword wounds go away. If you're worried about preserving that fragile suspension of disbelief, this could nuke it to kingdom come. But not all tables/players are as sensitive to that - in some places, it might not be even a little bit of a problem.

The second, more minor consideration is that this does away with the possibility of cramming more encounters into a rest or taking a rest after fewer encounters. Like, after two Easy encounters, maybe we don't NEED the recovery. But after one Deadly one, maybe we do! (You could solve this by switching from an "encounter" model to an "XP" model pretty simply - at certain XP points (as measured by adjusted XP/expected daily adjusted XP), you gain a short or long recovery).

 

[Gadget]

As others have pointed out, it may be too 'meta' for many in the simulationist crowd, though TheCosmicKid makes a good point about not trying too hard to explain it, it may just make it worse. It's not like 5e doesn't already have a lot of meta already (HP, XP, etc). I like the idea from 13th Age of letting the players make the choice but take a 'Campaign Loss' (We would have to define what that is a little better in D&D).

One thing that came to mind is how XP and 'level ups' are handled currently in many games. Now, I won't try to make up stats to strengthen my arguments, but I would guess that many to most games don't let players level up in the middle of an encounter, even if they have hit the required XP (for those games that track XP). Most games would wait until a long rest, some would wait until the end of the current adventure (or Dungeon level at least), others might even require training back in town, etc. It might be so with this 'encounter' paradigm. Once you have reached the required number of encounters, you get to benefits of a long/short rest at the next plausible place, not instantly. Or you could still press on, if a time limit is in place or maybe for greater reward/XP if you do so, thereby encouraging player choice and offering a risk/reward option. But, players are almost guaranteed an unmolested short/long rest at the next opportunity if they choose to take it once the milestone is reached.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

I see the conflict with a simulationist approach, but hit points and semi-Vanican casting are such wacky mechanics already - not simulationist at all - that I don't think your approach makes things much worse.

I'd be tempted to take this one step further: hit point recovery and ability are only recovered between adventures. Say you expect an adventure to include three long rests in standard 5E play. In this approach each player then has four times the normal hit points, spell slots, etc at the start of play, but you don't recover anything during the adventure - you have to budget your resources across the whole time. There's no leaving and coming back either. If you stop the adventure because you're out of resources, you've failed. The PCs may come back later, but it's a different adventure - previous enemies have either fled or been replaced. This is very much a D&D as war approach, which is my play preference.

 

[Saeviomagy]

I'd be inclined to create class specific metrics for resource gain that keep pace (more or less) with current short rests. Barbarians get rages back for slaughtering foes and taking damage, warlocks get spell slots back for fulfilling patron requests. Fighters possibly have a range of tactical scenarios they could get them for. Monks... not sure. Druids... again, not sure.

I don't think long rests need much of a change - they're already only possible/beneficial with DM permission. It might be worth separating them from "getting a good nights sleep". ie - if a character is roughing it they should be able to get sufficient sleep to function, but not enough to qualify for getting spells and hit dice back.