D&D 5E Classes with resources feel like usage is too restrained

[Tony Vargas]

I just struggle with what sort of adventure construction really works with the 6-8 encounter/2 short rest recommendation.

A large dungeon complex in the wilderness is the stereotypical example.

Long-distance travel with occasional encounters is right out

Unless you're willing to be flexible with the time needed to rest in different circumstances. If you only get short rests each night on the road, for instance, then if there are 6-8 encounters in the course of your month-long journey, it still works (though 3-4 tougher encounters would probably work better)

, so let's look at a dungeon. Let's say the industrious adventurers spend 8 hours adventuring in a day, of which 2 are taken by short rests. Let's say it takes 5 minutes to clear a room in a dungeon (fight, search, investigate interesting junk, whatever).

In the olden days, you explored dungeons in 10-minute turns... they'd add up.

Exactly how much time it takes to do general exploration tasks and how that relates to the impetus to press on vs taking a whole hour or 8 hrs out to rest is really something that, absent further mechanics, is going to vary quite a bit from one group to another. One group might want to clear a dungeon like Seal Team 6, and they'd have everyone in the Caves of Chaos dead or kneeling & blindfolded with their hands zip-tied behind them in 10 minutes flat. Others might creep along, carefully prodding each stone with a 10' pole, lest they fall into a fiendish trap...

Maybe the scheme works in a dungeon totally filled with random, independent stuff, where nobody much cares what's going on in the next room so long as they can eat fungus and sit on a pile of treasure in their own room...

We are talking about D&D, yes. ;P

 

[CapnZapp]

They're examples of mechanical incentives for 'pushing on' that D&D has tried in the past, and it wouldn't be hard to add such things back in if you wanted to, as a DM.

But... but they're all 4E solutions. Or "solutions" as I like to call most everything from 4E, because very little of it worked satisfactorily to me.

Milestones, the way you were denied healing when out of surges, the unified AEDU, almost all of it came across to me as either clumsy or heavyhanded.

Point being: somebody can't say "well we tried" if all those attempts were in the 4E era. As I said, I want to see the 5E designers take a stab at this.

Well, those are two very different sensibilities. Player Entitlement vs DM Empowerment. Rules-as-Written vs Rulings-not-Rules.

Look, I know you're subtly pushing your agenda that 5E is oh-so-different and balance is a nonissue, but I don't buy it.

5E is much closer to 3E (than 4E) in almost every aspect, which is why I'm bundling them together.

You might have much more experience with 4E, and you might read lots of 4E influence into 5E. Myself, I consider 5E to chiefly be a descendant of 3E. An edition that finally fixes for good a large portion of the d20 niggles, in a way that 3.5 or PF never comes even close to.

You're saying class balance isn't a thing in 5E, but since I consider class balance being better now than ever before (excluding 4E), I really can't muster up any objection - as I see it, class balance was a definite priority. I mean, I can't believe it was just a "happy accident" now can I?

That doesn't mean I don't see how class balance has taken a step backwards from 4E. Sure, compared to 4E, class balance has taken a step backwards. I just can't care

If you can't use the thing satisfactorily without meeting the expectations under which it was designed, that's enforcing those expectations, no?

If a thing breaks down when you go outside its parameters, that is seldom hailed as a successful design.

That's what we call design limitations, Tony. Not even a spin doctor gets to call that enforcement...

Also, good enforcement makes it clear what you do wrong. Merely having a thing break down gives no such explanations.

If you want to find actual enforcement, you'll have to look for something slightly more active than the thing breaking down merely by not using the thing as intended.

(Unless you want to argue the designers COULD have made 5E work even for single-encounter days, but CHOSE to have the game break down when used in such a way. But that would be preposterous in so many ways.)

 

[CapnZapp]

Unless you're willing to be flexible with the time needed to rest in different circumstances. If you only get short rests each night on the road, for instance, then if there are 6-8 encounters in the course of your month-long journey, it still works (though 3-4 tougher encounters would probably work better)

Thanks for the advice, but what I would have wanted is for this to be built right into the rules.

That the PHB doesn't unequivocally says you gain the benefits of rest after 8 hours. Instead, you gain the benefits of rest after 8 hours if circumstances allow it.

Then the DMG follows up on this with some general advice regarding when to allow it and when not to allow it. (Feel free to include a preachy speech on the negatives of being stingy if you must) Things about adventure pacing and managing encounter difficulty and the like.

Then the adventure module can use all of that to simply state (now returning to Tony's example) "the road is long and ardous, and camping for the night will only bring you the benefits of a short rest. You need to find one of the few coaching inns or temples and rest there in order to enjoy a long rest".

(Another module might say "feel free to rest whenever you want". A third module might say "you vow to not rest until you have secured Princess Amygdala's hand" and mean that literally.)

All this without coming as a surprise to players. Anyone complaining would have much less of a case, since the PHB didn't give you such an all-encompassing right to expect rest in the first place.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

The problem is that creates a ridiculously dangerous world. I'm to actually believe farmers grow crops,hunters hunt in the woods, and merchants move goods in a world like that?

Sorry, that busts my vtude.

5E created this problem by assuming people want to play through a bunch of MMO trash encounters/putty fights whose sole purpose is to provide a mild nuisance to let the non-casters "shine" and beat up on some chumps. I dont like rolling dice just for its own sake, and prefer combat to be meaningful and dangerous. The 6-8 encounter baseline nibbled to death by ducks attrition is terrible outside a dungeon, and even there the 1 hour rest is absurdly long.

Historically, dungeons were a place where you got nibbled to death by ducks, and the "wilderness" between dungeons was where you could accidentally meet up with something way outside your league (ancient red dragon at 2nd level) which would kill you with extreme prejudice. (Dungeons were actually safer than wilderness because you could predict the difficulty level inside a dungeon.) tBut that doesn't mean that merchants and farmers have to live in that kind of wilderness.

Merchants and farmers can live in the boring civilization that's three hundred leagues from the nearest dungeon and its loot. This works pretty well in 5E because bounded accuracy lets you plausibly argue that the armies of humankind really can defend themselves against Yuan-ti and dragons, in the right terrain. But nobody except death-seeking treasure hunters goes past the River of Desolation into the Mountains of Madness except PCs because that is a sure death sentence.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Fourthly, magic. Teleportation circles exist, and they're not exactly expensive for merchants to operate. The only hard part is finding someone that can cast a fifth level spell, and considering that the generic "mage" NPC is a 9th level caster, I would assume they're not common, but not exactly rare, either. So now you've bypassed that dangerous wilderness entirely. Perhaps not with large amounts of goods, but that's still going to assist trade a *huge* deal.

50 gp (the better part of a years' wages for a common laborer; $2500-$5000 buying-power-equivalent, e.g. 2500 chickens) for six seconds' of cargo transport really isn't that cheap. For luxury goods, sure, maybe. For bulk transport? Doesn't even begin to compete with blue-water transport, unless that blue-water transport is incredibly hazardous (filled with sea monsters) in which case your economy probably just breaks.

For comparison: modern freight cost for blue-water transport is IIRC $0.01 per ton-mile. Here's a chart: https://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch3en/conc3en/modaltransportcosttonmile.html Teleportation circle winds up being a couple orders of magnitude more expensive than modern-day air transport. Imagine an economy where everything has to travel not even by air freight but by spaceship--probably very little trade occurs at all. That's Teleportation Circle.

Sending is probably more economically significant than Teleportation Circle. Cheaper and easier to access.

 

[Willie the Duck]

50 gp (the better part of a years' wages for a common laborer; $2500-$5000 buying-power-equivalent, e.g. 2500 chickens)

D&D economics has never been consistent or worked at all well if you try to emulate the real lives of commoners. The equipment chart costs for non-adventuring goods are, IMO, clearly arbitrary and made with no thought to whether a commoner could afford to live in their own world. 50 gp is not 2500 chickens, it is the cost of a healing potion.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

D&D economics has never been consistent or worked at all well if you try to emulate the real lives of commoners. The equipment chart costs for non-adventuring goods are, IMO, clearly arbitrary and made with no thought to whether a commoner could afford to live in their own world. 50 gp is not 2500 chickens, it is the cost of a healing potion.

It is both. As well as the cost of three longswords, ten pikes, or a draft horse.

And are we not discussing commoners when we say "merchants"? To an adventurer, the cost of a healing potion might be more relevant. To a merchant trying to turn a profit, the price of a new horse or a month's wages probably looms larger than a healing potion.

 

[Willie the Duck]

It is both. As well as the cost of three longswords, ten pikes, or a draft horse. And are we not discussing commoners when we say "merchants"? To an adventurer, the cost of a healing potion might be more relevant. To a merchant trying to turn a profit, the price of a new horse or a month's wages probably looms larger than a healing potion.

I am making the positional (as in clearly labeled opinion) statement that those prices for non-adventuring goods are clearly arbitrary and not meant to stand up to rigorous economic analysis.

Either way, I think it's irrelevant. I think the world works because of your earlier point--bounded accuracy means humanity can keep the monsters on the other side of the River of Desolation and only PCs go over there and worry about how many encounters per day breaks their verisimilitude and whether it balances their short/long rest classes.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*