D&D (2024) Long rests getting better but GM needs still not being considered

[Olrox17]

This! If the players think there's no consequences, then they'll do what they want. This is not a failure of the rules, but a failure of DMing. I've never suffered much of an issue with the 5MWD, because I will adjust the adventure/world based on the actions of the players. Yeah, this might be more work and it might end your carefully crafted campaign, but if the players can get away with bad behavior, your campaign is going to be ruined anyway.

I think every DM learns to deal with that, sooner or later. Thing is, if it's a problem we can solve directly in the game mechanics (and we can), there's no need to make the DM learning curve steeper than it needs to be.
One of the reason I appreciate 4e over 3e and 5e is that I managed to be a player for years, as anyone in my group was able to DM pretty well with little trouble. Something that can't happen with 3e or 5e.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I had a problem with long rests from the moment they were instituted in the Next playtest. It was obvious that this wasn't a narrative mechanic; it was intended to be a "after X encounters, recover abilities". But by saying "it takes Y hours", it became rather immersion breaking.

One of the Next adventures had you exploring some ruins while trying to track down some enemies. After a few minor encounters (like, literally "three orcs"), we found some clues about where to go.

The DM says "ok, you travel for two weeks and get to..." and the players immediately started adjusting their hit points and so on, naturally assuming they got a long rest.

"No no no, you don't get a long rest, this is still the same game day."

From a mechanical standpoint, sure that made sense. But in the narrative, it was such a disconnect that several people just checked out and stopped taking the adventure seriously.

yup... in 2e we used to have random travel encounters in 3e we would too but they turned deadly fast at low levels, 4e it went back to working, and then came 5e low level (we fix this by not playing pre 3rd) random encounters can bedeadly like 3e, and at higher level they are jokes...

by 5th level you throw a 6 week travel with a 15% increase by 2% each non encounter reset to 15% at encounter roll 3/day 1 / at night... you might as well gift wrap xp to your players... the gift wrap will be the flesh of your random encounter

 

[mellored]

Arcane Recovery is already rather clunky, and that sort of mechanic wouldn't work if you wouldn't want the highest level of spells to be recharhable with one rest.

4e psionic classes mostly spammed their lower level stuff, rather than spending points on the big stuff.

With spell points it would be super easy, but those feel wrong for D&D.

I think they would work just fine for sorcerers.

But I also don't think spells are currently balanced across levels very well. So I wouldn't do it this edition.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Not every 5mwd is abuse... sometimes it is the flow of the game, and sometimes players are tapping out "dude, I have no HD left 7 hp and our cleric is out of spells... If I take all our potions I might be at 3/4 hp but no resources, so no I am needing to recharge"

Yup. And this is another problem with non-bluff Doom clocks which don't fail forwards in an interesting and fun way (which is actually most Doom clocks sadly).

If the players get unlucky or make a few bad decisions, it can be easy to get some or all of the party into a situation where a Long Rest is basically needed, but if there's no way to "stop the clock", then you're just setting fire to the campaign to make a point, which I think is very funny, but it's not likely to be fun or fondly remembered.

And particularly it's worth noting with the completely asymmetrical way 5E does resources (as opposed to 4E's largely symmetrical approach), it's not uncommon to see a a PC who is out of HP and HD, and the healer is out of heals, even though the Wizard has most of his spells left, and Fiend Warlock literally hasn't taken any damage which wasn't THP.

So what do you do? That one PC really needs a Long Rest, maybe it's mostly because he accidentally took an 80ft drop earlier, and the healer is also kind of in need of one, but maybe you're only 3 encounters in (or 1 even, I've seen people get mangled that bad with crits!). Do you say, oh well he'll just have to get Bobby McFighter killed because otherwise the DM will get mad? I mean come on.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I agree the warlock is the best designed class. But that doesn't mean I want every class to have the exact same design.

Artificer infusions and monks ki pool
for instance. Those are good mechanics as well (balance can be tweaked). Pathfinder 2 Swashbucklers is another one I really like. So is a 3.5 prepreare wizard (though IMO would go best with an alchemist, preparing potions each night).

And even if I will never personally play it, champion fighter should be included too. (Though IMO would go best with barbarian.).

To be fair when I did a full idea I used artificer and warlock as the two base classes but with some having some twists... the monk isn't a bad idea it just needs some work

 

[AnotherGuy]

With spell slots it is rather tricky to come up with an easy and elegant system that would let you regain portion of your spells via resting. Arcane Recovery is already rather clunky, and that sort of mechanic wouldn't work if you wouldn't want the highest level of spells to be recharhable with one rest. With spell points it would be super easy, but those feel wrong for D&D.

That's because WotC refuses to tie spells/abilities to the exhaustion mechanic via the HD system. If rests recovered HD which could then be used to cast spells then it would be simple. Short Rests recover x HD, Long Rests recover x HD. And then you let the player choose how to spend their HD with higher level spells/class features cost more HD.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

But I also don't think spells are currently balanced across levels very well. So I wouldn't do it this edition.

Yeah that's the big issue with spell point in 5E, spell levels were designed in such a way as to almost be intentionally opposed to being used with any kind of spell point system. The weird "some spells are just much better/worse than other similar ones because TRADITION!!!" really doesn't help either.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

The problem is, designing classes with different resource allocation is apparently too hard for WotC to balance in any real way. So depending on how the DM runs their games, some classes become much stronger or much weaker than intended.

Take AL for example. 3-4 encounters in a 2 hour session, maybe one short rest. People with daily resources clean up. Characters with encounter resources grumble a lot.

The reverse, an old style dungeon crawl, with many small encounters, where hiding in a broom closet for an hour is easy, but an 8 hour rest is impossible? Warlocks, Monks, and Battlemasters are raring to go while the full casters are like "dude, all we have is cantrips".

Now obviously, a mix of adventure styles would be best, but that's a lot of work to put on a DM, in my opinion.

this is why we balance at character creation... group full of artificers 1 multied into cleric is great, group that is all martial is perfect... mixing those parties would be a nightmare

 

[Ruin Explorer]

That's because WotC refuses to tie spells/abilities to the exhaustion mechanic via the HD system. If rests recovered HD which could then be used to cast spells then it would be simple. Short Rests recover x HD, Long Rests recover x HD. And then you let the player choose how to spend their HD with higher level spells/class features cost more HD.

I feel like I've played systems which work like that, but I can't quite place it. It's not entirely unlike how Spire/Heart work (because a lot of abilities/spells inflict Stress of various kinds on you when you use them).

 

[GMforPowergamers]

This! If the players think there's no consequences, then they'll do what they want. This is not a failure of the rules, but a failure of DMing. I've never suffered much of an issue with the 5MWD, because I will adjust the adventure/world based on the actions of the players. Yeah, this might be more work and it might end your carefully crafted campaign, but if the players can get away with bad behavior, your campaign is going to be ruined anyway.

Having doom clocks make for a great adventure or two but it gets old...

We had someone try to run a campaign like that once and after a bit we just got blase "Oh if we don't rush the prince dies... well if we die the prince dies, so we are taking a rest"