D&D 5E Live Q&A with D&D R&D

[Kinak]

I would definitely be interesting in trying out a game like that, where you have to save your spells or rage etc. for days to come! But clearly, nearly every gaming would find such an idea too weird and hard to play (with the added weirdness that you get ALL spell slots on the last day, while gradually would feel more understandable).

I've been advocating one week long rest for a while, so it's nice to see Mearls at least thinking about it.

The trick is making the long rest a week of rest. So if you're out adventuring, there's no weird blip at the end, you just get HP and abilities back once you actually take actual downtime.

This also has the benefit of making settlements really important and giving teeth back to wilderness encounters (because it's functionally very similar to a dungeon encounter now and you might easily have several per long rest).

What you absolutely want to avoid is leaving HP and "daily" abilities on different timers. That gets you right back into parties with healers and those without having wildly different pacing.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[Hutchimus Prime]

What you absolutely want to avoid is leaving HP and "daily" abilities on different timers. That gets you right back into parties with healers and those without having wildly different pacing.

I guess is don't get this. Why shouldn't they have different pacing? The party with the healer and the party without have essentially decided to play different styles of game and the session pacing should/could reflect that. The players of the parties have decided to play different character types with different strengths/benefits.

 

[Jack99]

I think it's funny that Chris mentioned the DMG, and Mike flinched at that one. I can imagine Chris thought the inclusion of the three core was so obvious that it wasn't revealing anything, but Mike has carefully avoided giving us names and numbers for the core books.

I can totally see at least 50 frequent posters claiming WotC lied to them if they do not publish a DMG now. Maybe that is why Mike flinched.

 

[Rhenny]

This also has the benefit of making settlements really important and giving teeth back to wilderness encounters (because it's functionally very similar to a dungeon encounter now and you might easily have several per long rest).

What you absolutely want to avoid is leaving HP and "daily" abilities on different timers. That gets you right back into parties with healers and those without having wildly different pacing.

Cheers!
Kinak

Good point. With daily refresh, wilderness adventures do seem somewhat pointless unless every wilderness encounter is with creature(s) that can rip the party up and bring them close to death every time.

 

[Kinak]

I guess is don't get this. Why shouldn't they have different pacing? The party with the healer and the party without have essentially decided to play different styles of game and the session pacing should/could reflect that. The players of the parties have decided to play different character types with different strengths/benefits.

I don't disagree with this, but there's a difference between a parties having different strengths and parties existing in different worlds.

Time has to flow differently when you have a (non-4e) healer in the party. This is the most obvious when the party composition changes in mid-stream or you're using a published module.

If you gain a healer, deadlines that were threatening are suddenly complete non-issues. If you lose a healer, deadlines that were threatening are now impossible. That's a problem if you're trying to build a consistent narrative, let alone a consistent world.

Now, you can handwave "the heroes make it there in the nick of time!" You basically have to under this sort of system, particularly with published modules. That's a cheat, but one players won't mind... if they don't notice.

Where that handwaving really causes problems, though, is in the 15-minute adventuring day. The best way to combat it is through applying real deadlines, making those rests into resources, not assumptions. Even pretending that's the case is an easy shell game to play... unless the timeline drastically shifts like we're talking about here.

If that wasn't enough of a reason, adding or removing a healer also makes wilderness travel work drastically differently. Moderate encounters over a few days can become a real problem without a healer, but are a complete waste of game time with a healer.

I can personally attest to losing interest in a campaign because the wilderness suddenly became a joke for this reason, so it's not just a theoretical complaint. Spell regeneration being on a different timeline than physical healing risks screws up worlds.

Good point. With daily refresh, wilderness adventures do seem somewhat pointless unless every wilderness encounter is with creature(s) that can rip the party up and bring them close to death every time.

Thanks!

The worst part, in my opinion, is having to choose between wasting the player's time with pushover encounters or making the hardest enemies they fight in the whole adventure be the random stuff they meet in the wilderness. But there isn't a middle ground if they're going to be worn down at all when they get to the climactic encounter.

Running meaningful wilderness encounters with daily refresh makes the world a scary, scary place.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[I'm A Banana]

OTOH extended rest also means refreshing spells and other daily abilities, which then becomes weekly abilities. This has a HUGE effect on adventure pacing!

I would definitely be interesting in trying out a game like that, where you have to save your spells or rage etc. for days to come! But clearly, nearly every gaming would find such an idea too weird and hard to play (with the added weirdness that you get ALL spell slots on the last day, while gradually would feel more understandable).

Therefore probably just dialing extended rest to be multiple days will be problematic, unless you dial it only with relation to natural healing, but still keep daily abilities per day, as usual.

For me, that's actually a strength.

Like, imagine Fireball can only be cast once per extended rest, and your extended rest is 10 days. What does that mean about how Fireball and spells like it are prepared? It essentially takes 10 days to "cast" fireball, to prepare the rituals, to gather the manna, to get enough guano, to make sure the stars are in line, to bind the energies, and to lock them away into your mind. Once everything is prepared, it just takes a moment to unleash all that pent up energy.

During an extended rest like this, presumably you are also doing other things (whatever downtime lets you do!), you're just also preparing your spells again.

That sets an interesting and involved tone for magic like that -- magic that takes weeks to set up and cast. Reality can be broken with a wave of the hand, but it takes preparation to do that.

This gives the "per encounter" spellcasting of the warlock or the sorcerer (which might be "daily" as my short rests are 8 hours) a dangerous frequency that the wizard would likely be jealous of. The wizard needs to carefully conduct research and ritual. The warlock just asks his friend for his favor for the day.

 

[Lanefan]

I can personally attest to losing interest in a campaign because the wilderness suddenly became a joke for this reason, so it's not just a theoretical complaint. Spell regeneration being on a different timeline than physical healing risks screws up worlds.

I've had spell restoration and natural h.p. recovery on different timelines since the dawn of history, hasn't proven to be an issue yet that I've noticed.

Most of the time, you get to reload your spells after a night's rest and some study (or praying) time. But for the same rest you only get back some of your h.p., usually 1/10 of your total, rounded up. (thus if you have 52 total h.p. an overnight rest gets you back 6)

Recovering spells at the same rate as h.p. will end in one of two ways: h.p. come back far too fast, or casters are completely gutted. Neither works for me.

Lanefan

 

[GX.Sigma]

Most of the time, you get to reload your spells after a night's rest and some study (or praying) time. But for the same rest you only get back some of your h.p., usually 1/10 of your total, rounded up. (thus if you have 52 total h.p. an overnight rest gets you back 6)

Yeah, but if you have a Cleric, all it takes is enough days for the Cleric to heal everyone, then rest one more time to fully reload spells. So it only takes 2 or 3 days to get back up to full hp if you have a cleric, but it would take 10 days if you don't.

 

[Kinak]

[MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION] I also really prefer the flavor of weekly spells imply. It makes me wish I'd always been doing it that way.

I'll probably be pitching "full healing and spells after a week of downtime" before my next Pathfinder campaign. My players will probably appreciate the slower pace and lack of needing a healer to stay on schedule, but we'll see what they think.

I've had spell restoration and natural h.p. recovery on different timelines since the dawn of history, hasn't proven to be an issue yet that I've noticed.

Most of the time, you get to reload your spells after a night's rest and some study (or praying) time. But for the same rest you only get back some of your h.p., usually 1/10 of your total, rounded up. (thus if you have 52 total h.p. an overnight rest gets you back 6)

Just so we're on the same page, have your party ever moved from having a healer to not or visa versa, mid-campaign? Because that's where it turned into a train wreck for me.

I've had plenty of campaigns where it never caused a problem as well, but that's because either nobody played a cleric (basically all of 2nd Edition) or the party had a cleric the whole time (most of 3rd and Pathfinder). Going from no healer to healer was complete mess, though.

I haven't seen the reverse, but if the cleric in my current game died and was replaced by a non-healer, I'd have to do some fancy footwork to not destroy the campaign. "Lulz, sorry guys, the evil archmage's plans are actually a couple months out rather than a few days" wouldn't cut it, so I'd probably need to sneak in an NPC or bunch of healing items... which is a pretty dubious thing to pull right after the party loses its healer, in my opinion.

Thankfully, the party has been hording scrolls to make sure he doesn't stay dead, so it's extremely unlikely it'll come up before the end of the campaign. I feel pretty dirty being glad the game trivializes death like that, though.

Recovering spells at the same rate as h.p. will end in one of two ways: h.p. come back far too fast, or casters are completely gutted. Neither works for me.

I don't see a functional difference, honestly. Either the casters wait up for everyone to heal up (like happens without a healer) or the party's healed up as soon as the casters are ready (like happens with a healer). It just makes those two the same time, so you can switch back and forth.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[Argyle King]

I guess is don't get this. Why shouldn't they have different pacing? The party with the healer and the party without have essentially decided to play different styles of game and the session pacing should/could reflect that. The players of the parties have decided to play different character types with different strengths/benefits.

In my experience, it leads to one member of the group being pressured into playing a healer/support-character even if they don't want to.