D&D 5E Resting and the frikkin' Elephant in the Room

[DaedalusX51]

Balance in 4e, particularly class balance, was different, it was robust and designed-in from the ground up. You didn't have to stick to a specific pacing to keep a semblance of class balance, and encounter difficulty swung much more on level than relative numbers or day length. In one sense, you could play in many more styles, because you could vary pacing/challenge/emphasis without wrecking class balance - in another sense, more central to the D&D experience, you couldn't, because there are hallowed styles that require radical class imbalance, and very high impact from resource management and rest timing.
4e was unique that way, resulting in the edition war, and 5e was a reaction to that, so couldn't treat balance the same way.

I think it's a shame that most things were abandoned from 4E. While I wasn't a fan of homogenization in order to achieve class balance or a Gamism first style of design, it had many features worth keeping.

Balanced classes that all used the same resting mechanisms, the Warlord, Fighters that did cool stuff, classes feeling complete from the beginning, the bloodied condition, returning to full HP after each battle, healing surges and daily powers as an attrition based resource, levels 21-30 in the base game, Paragon Paths, Epic Destinies, etc...

I just wish they would have divorced class from role, tied powers to power sources instead of class, matched flavor to mechanics, and used 5E like magic items, feats, and bounded accuracy.

To me 5E is almost that game, but then I also feel like it took a few steps back as well.

Maybe 6E will finally get it.

Edit: I think they could have still done things like powerful fireballs in a 4E type game while keeping class balance. You would just have to make spells take two turns to cast and deal double damage. Then with interruption mechanics it's a risk reward scenario like old school magic users.

 

[Soul Stigma]

I think it's a shame that most things were abandoned from 4E. While I wasn't a fan of homogenization in order to achieve class balance or a Gamism first style of design, it had many features worth keeping.

Balanced classes that all used the same resting mechanisms, the Warlord, Fighters that did cool stuff, classes feeling complete from the beginning, the bloodied condition, returning to full HP after each battle, healing surges and daily powers as an attrition based resource, levels 21-30 in the base game, Paragon Paths, Epic Destinies, etc...

I just wish they would have divorced class from role, tied powers to power sources instead of class, matched flavor to mechanics, and used 5E like magic items, feats, and bounded accuracy.

To me 5E is almost that game, but then I also feel like it took a few steps back as well.

Maybe 6E will finally get it.

Edit: I think they could have still done things like powerful fireballs in a 4E type game while keeping class balance. You would just have to make spells take two turns to cast and deal double damage. Then with interruption mechanics it's a risk reward scenario like old school magic users.

4E illustrated how divided a playerbase could be. It made Pathfinder a serious competitor, which the D&D brand hadn't seen in many moons. I think that's what caused such a big step back.

I personally did a flip flop with 4th. Preordered the three book set, saw the artwork (WoW looking stuff...) as well as the "powers" for all classes, focus on mini gaming, and promptly hated & shelved it. Started reading it more seriously some time later, decided to run it for some friends, ended up loving it. Then the campaign progressed into higher levels and encounters took longer... ended up doing the half monster HP double damage thing to speed it up. Abandoned it for Dungeon World.

When I saw that 5th was a return to roots, I was ecstatic. And so far I do love it. But...some of the very things you mentioned I also miss. I miss the simplicity and (am I saying this?) elegance of At Will, Encounter and Daily powers. Healing surges as a resource combined with the Bloodied condition (a term I still use to indicate to my players an enemy is at or below half HP).

Anyway, sorry for the novel. You just got me thinking with your post.

 

[jrowland]

If you decide what's behind the door before the PCs get there, they have real options of what door to open with real consequences. If you decide whats behind the door when they open it, then it was just a phantom choice, and that's the problem with sandbox play as I see it. Lots of flag waving about player freedom and choices and in the end still its just a DM making up whatever he wants after each player "choice", thereby making those "choices" trivial or meaningless.

Yeah, because the DM (or author) making it up ahead of time is not making it up?

 

[shoak1]

Yeah, because the DM (or author) making it up ahead of time is not making it up?

If you can't understand the huge difference in player agency validity that results from WHEN content is created by the DM, then I suspect you will never get my point.

 

[shoak1]

From the DM side these are a problem, but from the player side (and from the realism side where characters are people with a reasonable sense of self-preservation) this is often the most effective means of defeating a module and-or completing a mission, provided the table has enough patience to pull it off.

In the game I play in we're doing this nibbling tactic right now: we know that if we just try to gonzo in and lay waste to the place (a frost giant/white dragon stronghold) there's far more in there than we can handle, and we'll get annihilated. So, we're nibbling - a patrol here, a roomful of ogres there, then back off and reload for the next day; lather rinse repeat until we've beaten the population down to something we can handle in an all-out blitz.

And even some of the nibbles are proving to be almost more than we can chew!

All it would take would be to set an arbitrary start point - for example, 'Day 1' is whatever day it is when the party first enter the ogre's cave that hides the real dungeon, and the module-as-written is a 'snapshot' of things as they are on that day - and a day by day or even week by week "development track" as to what happens next unless the adventurers somehow interrupt it. This development track might even include resting notes, e.g. "Day 8: The Fire Titan begins to awaken. Earthquakes become frequent and harsh enough to prevent long resting within the dungeon or immediate surrounds, and short-rest benefits can only be regained by passing a DC 12 saving throw on each attempt."

In some modules e.g. Tomb of Horrors this might just be a one-liner saying, in effect, "Other than by direct PC action the dungeon environment will remain unchanged for years to come." For other modules it might become much more complicated - and thus more necessary.

Take Keep on the Shadowfell. The entire premise of the module is the PCs are supposed to arrive just in time to disrupt what's going on in the big set-piece encounter at the end, but there isn't a word about what happens if the PCs get there early...or worse, three months late like my crew did. This is an example of a module that really could have used a "what if" timeline of events that I-as-DM could use as a backdrop behind what the PCs are doing, but as a 4e module the writers obviously expected (and it shows!) the party would be blasting through it non-stop. My crew nibbled, in no small part because they were busy fighting each other at the same time, and made repeated trips back to town; and at 6 days each way that makes time pass quickly!

Lan-"there's limits, of course, to how many 'what ifs' a module can answer but a development track would catch a lot of them"-efan

Yes indeed, a little effort by the module developers in this area would have gone a long way.

 

[Corwin]

Yes indeed, a little effort by the module developers in this area would have gone a long way.

...Followed immediately by a great many cries of, "This module was terrible! The timeline was useless! My players didn't do anything the writer projected. So I had to decide whether to do a bunch of work on the fly to keep up with their decisions, or scrap it and just tell them they lost a third of the way through it! Ugh! And here I thought I was buying it so I wouldn't have to do any work! Bah!"

 

[Lanefan]

...Followed immediately by a great many cries of, "This module was terrible! The timeline was useless! My players didn't do anything the writer projected.

The timeline is what happens only if the PCs (in effect) do nothing. The point isn't to project what the PCs will do, or how they'll do it, but instead to give a suggested sequence of events (if any) that'll reasonably happen if the PCs take too long. It could also be used - and has been, in some modules - as a guideline for 'what' happens 'when' even if the PCs get bang at it; even if it's someting so simple as "At any mealtimes the BBEG will be in area 6; at night she sleeps in area 15; otherwise on day 1 she will be found in areas 13-15, on Day 2 she'll be surveying the final construction of the UberWeapon in area 18, and on Day 3 she'll be in areas 13-15 until noon after which she'll proceed to area 18 to oversee the initial test procedure..."

Lanefan

 

[Sadras]

Yes but in 5e resource management is more crucial than it was before because most all classes and many magic items get rechargable powers - in the old days resource management was just hp and spells. So anything that provides easy rest (like Rope Trick and Leomund Tiny Hut) takes on greater import.

Of course the spells already existed.

What didn't exist, however, was such a heavy emphasis on resource depletion as a primary source of challenge.

Okay, I agree with that, they could have done more to curb the Rest given how resource management in 5e is crucial.

In finding a solution to this, one could:
(a) Remove short rests completely and convert short-rest rechargeable abilities to long rest powers;
(b) Lengthen the Long Rest to include at minimum a full day of no combat/travel as well as 6 hours of sleep; and
(c) Decrease the recovery rate of Hit Points and/or Hit Dice.

(a) removes the obvious benefit of Rope Trick, while (b) removes the obvious benefit of Leomund's Tiny Hut. Although to be fair to the designers, they already included a longer rest variant in the DMG which takes care of those two spells.

However (a) in my example additionally removes the short rest powers issues one might have with them.

This I believe removes the issue with Rests, the only other issue that remains is Pacing which can be dealt with using tools such as harsh environment, wandering monsters, threat dice and/or time limitation.

The thing to remember about modules and APs is that the playerbase will be running them differently, so yes resource management is crucial in 5e but you will have DMs running them with various Rest Variants, nevermind other variables such as Low-High Magic, Slower-Faster Healing Recovery, Experience Points/Milestone Leveling, Upscaling/Downscaling the AP due to the party level...etc

You cannot expect the designers to cater for all such circumstances.

EDIT: In my HotDQ, the characters are a little higher level and so I adequately beefed up the monsters, but that didn't stop the characters from setting up 2 x Wall of Forces and 2 x Wall of Fires at the major exists of the Hunting Lodge (after they snuck up on it), burning it down and killing most of the occupants. The players loved it while all my preparation as DM got burned in the towering fire

 

[Hussar]

To be fair though, I would like it if modules would have a few more maps that detailed different "alert levels" in, say, a dungeon. So, you have the "rest stat" map, where the monsters are keyed to rooms X, Y and Z. A "The Alarm has Gone UP" which details which monsters move where once the alarm has been raised - so maybe monsters might be encountered in corridors on their way from X to Y. And then a "High Alert" state map, say, 10-15 minutes after the alarm has been raised which changes the encounters significantly.

One of the big failings I see in modules is the lack of use of maps. Far too often maps are just numbered keys. WHy not actually state room inhabitants?

 

[ExploderWizard]

To be fair though, I would like it if modules would have a few more maps that detailed different "alert levels" in, say, a dungeon. So, you have the "rest stat" map, where the monsters are keyed to rooms X, Y and Z. A "The Alarm has Gone UP" which details which monsters move where once the alarm has been raised - so maybe monsters might be encountered in corridors on their way from X to Y. And then a "High Alert" state map, say, 10-15 minutes after the alarm has been raised which changes the encounters significantly.

One of the big failings I see in modules is the lack of use of maps. Far too often maps are just numbered keys. WHy not actually state room inhabitants?

That is the reason for the map key. The room descriptions list the inhabitants. The key is also where changes to the listed descriptions go.

4) Guard Chamber:
3 bugbears are usually on duty here. If the alarm has been raised then the bugbears will be reinforced by their fellows from area 6. If the chieftain in area 12 blows his horn, all available remaining bugbears will flock to his aid.

Three different maps would be of little use in this situation. The number of bugbears still available to rush to the chieftain's aid will vary from group to group, so putting an arbitrary number of them on an extra map serves little purpose.

More detail in the key about likely courses of action when alerted to danger is what is needed. Since one never knows who is still alive to take those actions once PCs start interacting with the scenario, extra maps would just add cost with little benefit.