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Resting and the frikkin' Elephant in the Room
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7119580" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>Answer: I don't play a system that allows for 4e inspired refreshes of resources.</p><p></p><p>Longer Answer: Enforcing attrition has always been somewhat hard in D&D. In many situations and scenarios, nothing prevents the party from going as slowly and carefully as possible, resting frequently to recover spells and hit points. The lack of a way to enforce attrition on a party is one of the reason I don't consider S1 Tomb of Horrors the hardest and most brutal module ever published. </p><p></p><p>The innovations introduced in 4e and to a large extent carried over into 5e were designed with the purpose and intention of largely doing away with the attrition model that D&D had theoretically relied upon in the 1e, 2e, and 3e eras. </p><p></p><p>It is therefore rather ridiculous to not acknowledge that and act like nothing has changed, and that challenging the players through attrition - always a difficult proposition - is now somehow supported by the system. It's not. It's deliberately deprecated by the system. Instead, in 4e and 5e, the idea is largely that you can reliably predict how many resources the party will have going into an encounter, and balance each encounter on that assumption.</p><p></p><p>One of the problems we've consistently seen in D&D since the early games is that the games math works well at low levels, and then is increasingly 'off' at higher levels. In 1e the game was really only focused on getting up to about 10th level, and very little in the game really provided for anything much beyond that. It was assumed by that point, the DM was quite experienced and could figure it out on their own. The situation only became worse with the power creep introduced by Unearthed Arcana, and fighters with optimized kit could take down anything in the game quite quickly. 3e famously had a glorious sweet spot when first published of between about 2nd and 9th level, and became increasingly fiddly and problematic at higher levels, along with the problem of casters vastly out stripping non-casters at higher levels. Plus the early 3e era CR's vastly underestimated the real capabilities that high level characters would achieve. Despite deliberately trying to address some of these issues, the situation only became worse in 3.5. 4e supposedly 'fixed the math' but people that actually played it found the combats very grindy and generally unchallenging at high levels because PC's simply had too many resources and monsters too few. </p><p></p><p>So I'm not at all surprised to hear that 5e has somewhat similar issues, or that modules, written by people with long experience with D&D but not with 5e, subtly have a bias toward encounters and scenarios that make more sense in terms of earlier editions. </p><p></p><p>Your solution is to stop trying to run the game like you are playing 1e, 2e, or 3e. If you are wanting to use existing modules and material, well, then you are out of luck. Modules, however useful that they may be, have always had the problem that they required adaptation to suit the needs and play style of your particular table. They have never been, as they are often treated, get out of work cards that mean the DM can run successful games without the sweat of preparation.</p><p></p><p>Additional Thoughts: You seem to be trying to rely on published material for 5e, despite the fact that by and large, the reviews of that material have been negative. Moreover, the best reviewed 5e modules have been exactly those that expect and require the largest efforts by the DM to make them playable and sustain their gameplay. The two I thought the best written, 'Underdark' and 'Strahd', were rather wide open sandboxes that provided mostly the skeleton of a campaign and a large number of mix and match encounters for the DM to leverage as needed. You have I think the wrong idea regarding what a DM's relationship to a published module actually is.</p><p></p><p>For that matter, you seem to have the wrong idea regarding what a GM's relationship to a system is. In the first episode of 'Critical Role', Matt Mercer says (I'm paraphrasing from memory), "Those of you that are sticklers for the rules may notice some things that are weird. That because everything is house ruled for fun, and fun is more important than what is written down." And generally speaking I agree. A GM is not a servant of the rules as written. The rules as written are the servant of the GM, and it's the GMs job to alter the rules as written to suit his own particular way of creating fun - keeping in mind that with this power comes the obligation to actually deliver on the fun. If you deliver on the fun, and if your rulings are consistent, fair, and non-arbitrary, chances are no one is going to care that it's not the same as the official rules.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7119580, member: 4937"] Answer: I don't play a system that allows for 4e inspired refreshes of resources. Longer Answer: Enforcing attrition has always been somewhat hard in D&D. In many situations and scenarios, nothing prevents the party from going as slowly and carefully as possible, resting frequently to recover spells and hit points. The lack of a way to enforce attrition on a party is one of the reason I don't consider S1 Tomb of Horrors the hardest and most brutal module ever published. The innovations introduced in 4e and to a large extent carried over into 5e were designed with the purpose and intention of largely doing away with the attrition model that D&D had theoretically relied upon in the 1e, 2e, and 3e eras. It is therefore rather ridiculous to not acknowledge that and act like nothing has changed, and that challenging the players through attrition - always a difficult proposition - is now somehow supported by the system. It's not. It's deliberately deprecated by the system. Instead, in 4e and 5e, the idea is largely that you can reliably predict how many resources the party will have going into an encounter, and balance each encounter on that assumption. One of the problems we've consistently seen in D&D since the early games is that the games math works well at low levels, and then is increasingly 'off' at higher levels. In 1e the game was really only focused on getting up to about 10th level, and very little in the game really provided for anything much beyond that. It was assumed by that point, the DM was quite experienced and could figure it out on their own. The situation only became worse with the power creep introduced by Unearthed Arcana, and fighters with optimized kit could take down anything in the game quite quickly. 3e famously had a glorious sweet spot when first published of between about 2nd and 9th level, and became increasingly fiddly and problematic at higher levels, along with the problem of casters vastly out stripping non-casters at higher levels. Plus the early 3e era CR's vastly underestimated the real capabilities that high level characters would achieve. Despite deliberately trying to address some of these issues, the situation only became worse in 3.5. 4e supposedly 'fixed the math' but people that actually played it found the combats very grindy and generally unchallenging at high levels because PC's simply had too many resources and monsters too few. So I'm not at all surprised to hear that 5e has somewhat similar issues, or that modules, written by people with long experience with D&D but not with 5e, subtly have a bias toward encounters and scenarios that make more sense in terms of earlier editions. Your solution is to stop trying to run the game like you are playing 1e, 2e, or 3e. If you are wanting to use existing modules and material, well, then you are out of luck. Modules, however useful that they may be, have always had the problem that they required adaptation to suit the needs and play style of your particular table. They have never been, as they are often treated, get out of work cards that mean the DM can run successful games without the sweat of preparation. Additional Thoughts: You seem to be trying to rely on published material for 5e, despite the fact that by and large, the reviews of that material have been negative. Moreover, the best reviewed 5e modules have been exactly those that expect and require the largest efforts by the DM to make them playable and sustain their gameplay. The two I thought the best written, 'Underdark' and 'Strahd', were rather wide open sandboxes that provided mostly the skeleton of a campaign and a large number of mix and match encounters for the DM to leverage as needed. You have I think the wrong idea regarding what a DM's relationship to a published module actually is. For that matter, you seem to have the wrong idea regarding what a GM's relationship to a system is. In the first episode of 'Critical Role', Matt Mercer says (I'm paraphrasing from memory), "Those of you that are sticklers for the rules may notice some things that are weird. That because everything is house ruled for fun, and fun is more important than what is written down." And generally speaking I agree. A GM is not a servant of the rules as written. The rules as written are the servant of the GM, and it's the GMs job to alter the rules as written to suit his own particular way of creating fun - keeping in mind that with this power comes the obligation to actually deliver on the fun. If you deliver on the fun, and if your rulings are consistent, fair, and non-arbitrary, chances are no one is going to care that it's not the same as the official rules. [/QUOTE]
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