D&D (2024) Fixing short rest novaloops is important... using the moon druid

[Vikingkingq]

If it was such a simple thing why is something like that not in any of the UA rules glossary resting entries?

Well, “simple” and “easy” aren‘t the same thing: it’s a simple fix in the sense that it doesn’t require new mechanics, it’s a single line of text, and it doesn’t involve any complicated clauses that have implications for action economy or spell interactions or the like.

But it’s not necessarily an “easy” fix, for a number of reasons:

• it could be legitimately difficult to arrive at a number that fits every class at every level. While most classes have a short rest feature, they vary by how important that feature is. A Wizard is less reliant on Arcane Recovery than a Warlock is on Pact Magic, for example. Likewise, that reliance can change over time based on the class’s other features: a 2nd level Monk needs Short Rests more than a 10th level Monk does, because their Discipline Point costs don’t change until they hit 17th or 18th level, and their Uncanny Metabolism is restoring a larger pool of Points as they go up in level. Both of these things are going to change what number people will feel happy with.
• it can has a significant influence on adventure design, because you need to pace out the number of encounters and the placement of minor, major, and boss fights with the hard cap in mind, because once you’ve set the rule, players aren’t free to just take another short rest if they run into a cold streak and/or the dm is on a hot streak.
• even if the devs can make the math work, it doesn’t guarantee they get the feel right. Throughout the play test, we’ve seen instances where the devs have talked about a change being mathematically equivalent but where the fans just don’t like how it feels. Even if the math really was the same on the long rest half-caster Warlock or templated Wildshape, people still would have disliked the change because they respectively liked to nova or liked hunting through books for statblocks.

 

[Charlaquin]

There's no reason to break up a post into individual isolated statements in order to respond to each little thing in stripped of context. I started fisking in kind because it was impossible to respond to your posts twisting around the broader points by fisking through mine in any other way, please stop... that's how you go from missing that you brought up warlocks having two slots per short rest in this post where you said warlock can't spam 5th level spells & miss that it was the reply to that very same post that pointed out you were skipping a bunch of levels as well as the range where they could also spam 5th level spells like the crawford quote talked about. It was later that you started with the implied dismissal of that range. Almost every post since has ben an effort to avoid that topic. I don't see continued fisking as a good start fo actual discussion.

Since I’m not keen on getting myself on your ignore list I will try to respect your request not to break up your posts too much, but please try to understand that’s a very difficult way for me to try to carry out a conversation. You make multiple points in a single paragraph, let alone a whole post, and I want to address them all, but if I don’t address those points directly and indicate what I’m responding to, it’s very easy for points to get lost.

I absolutely, categorically, did not miss that I brought up warlocks having two spell slots per short rest, though you do seem to have missed that I said they had two spell slots for most of their career and that they cap out at four - my point being that neither two spell slots per rest, nor four spell slots per rest is what I would consider “spamming 5th level spells.” I left out levels 11 to 16 not because I was trying to avoid that topic, but because I figured that if two 5th level spells per short rest doesn’t constitute spamming, and four fifth level spells per short rest doesn’t constitute spamming, it would go without saying that three 5th level slots between tests wouldn’t constitute spamming either. Evidently you disagree with that take, and that’s fine, we can discuss that point further. But please, focus on actually arguing why you think 3 5th level slots per short rest does constitute spamming instead of trying to “prove” that I missed something or am trying to hide something when I have repeatedly explained the reasons for my choice of phrasing, demonstrated that they have nothing to do with missing anything, and tried to directly address your argument about levels 11-16. If anyone is trying avoid talking about anything, it seems to me like you are trying to avoid addressing my point that the Jeremy Crawford quote you keep bringing up was an explanation of why warlocks can’t have both pact magic and more spell slots than they do in the 2014 PHB. I’ve made that argument three times now, and every time you have ignored it in favor of trying to characterize me as having missed something or trying to brush over 11th through 16th level. Well, here I am, directly addressing 11th through 16th level, I don’t think it’s a problem because if four 5th level slots between short rests is ok, of course three 5th level slots between short rests is ok. Now it’s your turn: please address my point that Jeremy Crawford was explaining why, if warlocks keep Pact Magic in 2024, Warlocks can’t also get more Pact Magic slots than they have in 2014.

as I said & explained earlier earlier in post17, all forms of the 5mwd are awful. The relevant detail here is that short rest classes combined with 5e's nearly guaranteed explosive resting & recovery rules adds up to classes that are designed in a way that strongly incentivizes players to guarantee an unbreakable 5mwd loop that holds the campaign itself hostage... here's how.


Yes a single level 11 warlock could only cast a maximum of 3 5th level spells, but that warlock also has a 6th level arcanum slot tied to long rests and agonizing repelling blast dealing 3x 1d10+5 depending on how much the knockback & force damage should be weighed that puts it squarely in the sights of what dmg 283/284 lists as a 4th or 5th level spell (if not higher) and devils sight and likely an imp and etc etc etc. If you look at the exchange in post 20 & 24(24one quotes 20) you can see two different ends of the rest problem where one group doesn't have enough & a second group has too many. You are considering only the first group & its party makeup but not the second or the mindset of a meaningful chunk of that group.

The details of that second group are very important though because it has a plurality or outright majority of short rest classes+fighters(action surge) who can set the pace to all nova all the time and once combined do so in a way that will turn any encounter into a fine red mist only to state that they can't go further without a rest because they are tapped out. At that point the GM has no good options...

• Any encounter that can withstand the combined nova is probably beefy enough to trivially turn a PC into a fine red mist every round they engage in any sort of coordinated focused fire.
• If the GM tries to force the group to continue without a rest the odds are very good that the 2ish long rest PCs will face severe problems of their own in trying to handle an encounter tuned for 5 PCs with 2-3 of them completely tapped out, that drawn out PC snuffing encounter is not going to end well for the campaign when it's probably the long rest PC players eating the cost for the SR nova loop being blocked from resetting by fiat alone.
• The depth needed to massage that problem with magic items is not really available to the GM either because nobody needs magic items and in 5e it's very difficult to fit magic items to a specific PC without doing so in a way that is so obvious & over the top that it's hard not to invoke GM favoritism stereotypes like this one.
• The GM use a doom clock or something & just draw a line where the quest failed for whatever story reason, but 5e PC's don't actually need anything from the world that might be put at risk & the GM is the one who is poorly reflected if they simply declare the monsters left after packing up halfway into the session or presents a chaub of "unwinnable" quests after the cornered GM shoots the hostage one too many times.
• The GM could stagger encounters that need nova & encounters that the non SR nova classes can carry while carefully monitoring which the party must not get next, but that gets very obvious very quick and has an extremely narrow margin of error before effectively turning someone's PC into a fine red mist
• There are probably other no-win scenarios for things the GM could try to do, but at the end of the session the GM is forced to accept the SR-nova loop invoke heavy handed fiat or change the rules for wotc. Those last two tend to go over extremely poorly with players however.

One warlock or monk going nova then Halting for a short rest every fight or two breaking down late tier2 early tier3 is an extremely different scenario than a plurality or majority of the group doing it. I tried to focus heavily on 11-16 because of both your numbers as well as Crawford's fairly explicit quote along with the fact that it's much less debatable that it's much easier for a warlock to vastly exceed the curve witth enough rests after hitting that range. In that second situation the nova loop breaks things down to the list above much faster simply because there aren't many encounters appropriate for a level 5 party that are capable of eating something like 2x fireballs/round while also eating flurry+stunningstrike+stunningstrike and action surge(s). Those that can are likely to be built in a way that could trivially reenact LMOP's opening by killing a PC round one then round two or immediately walking into strahd's throne room at the start of a Ravenloft adventure. Designing the encounter around countering that deluge of spells only kicks off an arms race of adversarial GM'ing to the bottom.


Just as simply cranking the CR dial to a point well past beyond lethal that could handle the combined nova loop is rife with unworkable problems, so too is cranking the number of encounters in the already excessive 6-8 expectation. When most of the group is dead set on taking a short rest every fight or two and a plurality or majority of the party is monk/warlock or fighter (action surge) it doesn't matter to the players of those PCs how many mind numbing encounters the adventuring day holds for the party to melt in round one. The only players it does matter to are the ones with long rest classes, it matters to them because they are already relegated to third wheel status by the nova loop going on beside them & long rest class players are the only ones capable of eating meaningful attrition to further reduce the dwindling power of long rest class PCs as the number of encounters stretch out. The only counter for the long rest class PCs is to further reduce their already third wheel level contributions by relying exclusively on at will abilities like cantrips & their basic attacks

You are making so many points here, I would love to go through them and make my case for why I disagree with them point-by-point. But since you have explicitly asked me not to do so, all I can really do is say I disagree with your assessment. I think the second group you’re referring to is an extreme outlier relative to the typical 5e play experience, and I think the approaches you suggest to trying to deal with the problems that group is experiencing are far less than ideal, and in fact may be exacerbating the problems this hypothetical group is experiencing. I think for the vast majority of 5e play groups, 2014 warlocks are fine, if not slightly on the underpowered side, and 2024 warlocks will be a more reasonable power level. I think that your preferred solution of eliminating short rest based resource management from the game completely would make the game far less dynamic and less enjoyable for the majority of 5e groups, and I think the general response to the proposed attempt to present a long rest based warlock in UA 5 supports my position on that matter. And I think it may be best for you to seriously consider that the play patterns 5e is actively designed to facilitate may simply not be to your liking, and you and your group may be better served by significantly house ruling 5e to better suit your needs and preferences, if not looking for a game that is better aligned with those needs and preferences to begin with.

Sorry if that’s an unsatisfying response; again, I can make arguments on each of these individual points if you want to hear them, but if you insist that I address your entire point holistically, that’s what I’ve got for you. I think you’re wrong, and I think 5e is probably just not the game for you if short rest resource recovery is really that problematic for you.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Funny to read only one side of the argument. And I really have not understood the point made in the OP. Is he argumenting pro or against short rests...

All I can say: I really like the dynamic of short and long rest, but in 2014, our playstyle tends to favour long rest classes, because we play less dungeons and more overland stories.

I really hope variant rest rules are placed directly intonthe phb, present for all. Or in a dedicated chapter in the DMG that not just presents them, but also explains when to use which ones.
Also the 6 to 8 encounters per day really have to be explained better and we need examples in the DMG how an adventuring day could be structured.
How can 2 or 3 encounters be combined into one with 2 to 3 waves of low threat enemies and reenforcements where no rest in between is possible, tgat combine into one deadly encounter and so on.

BTW: 6 to 8 encountes per day means 1 level up each 1 to 2 days... thats a bit fast for our tastes.

 

[tetrasodium]

Well, “simple” and “easy” aren‘t the same thing: it’s a simple fix in the sense that it doesn’t require new mechanics, it’s a single line of text, and it doesn’t involve any complicated clauses that have implications for action economy or spell interactions or the like.

But it’s not necessarily an “easy” fix, for a number of reasons:

• it could be legitimately difficult to arrive at a number that fits every class at every level. While most classes have a short rest feature, they vary by how important that feature is. A Wizard is less reliant on Arcane Recovery than a Warlock is on Pact Magic, for example. Likewise, that reliance can change over time based on the class’s other features: a 2nd level Monk needs Short Rests more than a 10th level Monk does, because their Discipline Point costs don’t change until they hit 17th or 18th level, and their Uncanny Metabolism is restoring a larger pool of Points as they go up in level. Both of these things are going to change what number people will feel happy with.
• it can has a significant influence on adventure design, because you need to pace out the number of encounters and the placement of minor, major, and boss fights with the hard cap in mind, because once you’ve set the rule, players aren’t free to just take another short rest if they run into a cold streak and/or the dm is on a hot streak.
• even if the devs can make the math work, it doesn’t guarantee they get the feel right. Throughout the play test, we’ve seen instances where the devs have talked about a change being mathematically equivalent but where the fans just don’t like how it feels. Even if the math really was the same on the long rest half-caster Warlock or templated Wildshape, people still would have disliked the change because they respectively liked to nova or liked hunting through books for statblocks.

I agree with all of this but think there is a bigger problem with fixing it than just getting the numbers right for each class at each level. If you look back at 3.x it varies from class to class but the rest rules were loaded with all kinds of weasel clauses to a fairly tight bit of RAW that may as well have been a flavor &fluff laden "ask your gm" on both 'can we rest?" as well as "did we finish?" With the RAW relying on the gm's judgement being reasonable for a fun session given the adventure & party needs. Things like needing a specific time of day, needing a "good" night's sleep, having to spend peaceful time in prayer/study... Etc.. I might be off on some of the wording on those but they all boil down to asking the gm and the gm having a significant say just in if they agree about a rest being reasonable or not.

The trend in 5e rest mechanics goes the other way in an almost kneejerk overreaction to someone's past bad game experience that does away with all those weasel words allowing the GM to casually block or create exceptions in the RAW rest rules in favor of crafting rules that are more "we are taking a test and don't care what you say, stop wasting our time by pretending the gm has a say in MY rest ". That's a very different mindset for rules to be catering towards. Unfortunately it's almost a mindset where the gm is assumed to always be .an unreasonable actor who wants to crush their players (ie new and inexperienced killer gm type). Such an unreasonable actor is probably incapable of being assumed to .ake reasonable choices about those earlier weasel clauses on something important like resting so you wind up with rules that try to restrict that killer gm as much as possible.

That effort in shifting control over rest and recovery to such an extreme degree doesn't seem like a thing wotc is willing to dial back at all as long as some newer less experienced gm could possibly say no to an unreasonable way without really understanding their mistake at the time.

Adventure design was never really a meaningful hurdle for resting when needed in actual play because the GM could always listen to their players expressing how much the group really needs a rest and simply provide/point out stored magic items or choose to allow full of partial resting to happen even though everyone at the table knows that getting a good night's sleep here seems very far from passing the sniff test of plausibility.


What few changes they made to the UA rules glossary changes rest rules have trended towards baked in automated success conditions and hurdles that are completely without value if the gm is not willing to declare the monsters left or doom clocks runs out or similar to simply ending the session right there if not ready to unroll a second third or fourth prepared adventure of the season.