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

[CapnZapp]

What's the point of the thread then if it isn't looking for solutions? You're just looking for people to pay you on the back and congratulate your perspicaciousness?

No time pressure is not the only solution. The easiest solution is to take those big honking single day encounters and break them up a bit.

But since you insist on giving your players every possible advantage I'm left thinking that you don't really want a solution at all.

If nothing else, congratulations for using the word perspicaciousness!

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

 

[Ovinomancer]

Nope. Not at all.

But you also don't get to pretend that solutions don't exist.

There's a difference between, " I'm having this problem." And "I'm having this problem and I will reject any and all solutions that are not 100% mechanical in nature and 100% WotC official".

If your solution doesn't work for me, then it's not a solution. Thus means I don't have to pretend that it doesn't exist -- it doesn't exist as a solution for me.

Personally, I have much less of an issue than Zapp does and I've managed a workable solution for my games. However, it's not your solution, and you do not speak for me, so kindly stop assuming you have the right of it for everyone. I understand Zapp's points and am interested in further discussion on the topic which, even now, is turning up interesting bits. What I don't appreciate is you assuming to speak for everyone so you can shut down the discussion.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Sigh #3

Really, Tony, you three?

Yeah, sorry, BA, a big enough unit of archers can kill the dragon, a big enough mob of orcs can kill the hero.

And, if the DM is willing to use arbitrary 'random' encounters as clearly-telegraphed rest-punishment, he should have no compunction about them arbitrarily camping under the rope trick or having a caster or one-charge item to pop the Tiny Hut.

The thing about a more or less guaranteed rest-punishment is players start factoring it in, "well, we could take a few more encounters, but we need to be able to take anything that bothers us, so we might as well re-charge, now."

I believe the best 100% mechanical 100% WotC solution presently available is to use the Gritty Realism option from the DMG

Realism is hardly the word, but, you can flip in that option and have a slow-paced campaign of hexcrawls and politicking or whatever. Throw in anything faster-paced and you, again screw things up, just in a slightly different way.

So it's still a campaign 'solution' (problem-shift), not a mechanical one.

and apply *all* the words in the PHB RAW on Long Rests.

Its not exactly a 100% WotC solution, if you have to repudiate the official line on what said words mean.

There is, as you point out, room for interpretation and case-by-case rulings on some aspects of resting, which is entirely in accord with 5e DM Empowerment. There could just be a lot more room for the same when it comes to rest timing & duration.

 

[shoak1]

And, if the DM is willing to use arbitrary 'random' encounters as clearly-telegraphed rest-punishment, he should have no compunction about them arbitrarily camping under the rope trick or having a caster or one-charge item to pop the Tiny Hut. The thing about a more or less guaranteed rest-punishment is players start factoring it in, "well, we could take a few more encounters, but we need to be able to take anything that bothers us, so we might as well re-charge, now."
Realism is hardly the word, but, you can flip in that option and have a slow-paced campaign of hexcrawls and politicking or whatever. Throw in anything faster-paced and you, again screw things up, just in a slightly different way.

So it's still a campaign 'solution' (problem-shift), not a mechanical one.

Its not exactly a 100% WotC solution, if you have to repudiate the official line on what said words mean.

There is, as you point out, room for interpretation and case-by-case rulings on some aspects of resting, which is entirely in accord with 5e DM Empowerment. There could just be a lot more room for the same when it comes to rest timing & duration.

I think the broader point here is the unsatisfactory nature of solutions to GAME SYSTEM balance issues always being the waving of a Big Empowered DM's +20 Wand of Power. I think too many of you are just failing to realize the danger in alienating those of us Gamists / DM light / 4e fans / Big Challenge peeps who at least want the MAJOR elements of the game balance to be drawn from the system itself rather than from arbitrary decisions from Big DM or creation of work-arounds or other options. We learned from 4e the danger of alienating a large segment of our fan base - yet it appears nothing has been learned from that debacle. For all the talk of The Game To Unite Us All, it's pure rhetoric ("Where's the beef" is the somewhat dating-of-myself expression that comes to mind).

We are not talking here about a subjectively interpretive balance issue like comparing Linguist and GWM - we are talking about the system that drives the fundamental balance in the game to an equivalently great extent as CR ratings. To suggest Rest specifics and restrictions should not be clearly outlined in modules and other published materials then begs the question of why the game designers went into such incredible detail and attempts to balance so many things like CR ratings, classes, feats, powers, and such, without providing sufficient detail on the much broader balance issue of Rest. It seems it would have been more logical to just let Big DM wave his Wand of Power on that stuff rather than have to do so on the most important balancing issue of all.

To put it another way, balance in the game system is derived from the combination of the Ying (the relative power between PCs and baddies, expressed as CR ratings vs level) and the Yang (the expected amount of activity and resource management derived from rest patterns). The designers have put a great deal of effort into the Ying, and almost nothing into the Yang. As the Ying and the Yang are necessarily intertwined mechanisms, THAT renders the Ying virtually irrelevant. Players should not have to rely on Big DM to fix this gaping hole at the top of the food chain - it should come from the game itself that we paid good money for! THAT is the Elephant in the room we are discussing herein...

(Steve smiles and braces himself for the expected vigorous flow of XP this remarkably well-structured and cogent argument shall surely bring....)

 

[Tony Vargas]

I think the broader point here is the unsatisfactory nature of solutions to GAME SYSTEM balance issues always being the waving of a Big Empowered DM's +20 Wand of Power.

To be fair, we wave that wand at all sorts of problems, please don't feel that your concerns are being singled out for such treatment.

I think too many of you are just failing to realize the danger in alienating those of us Gamists / DM light / 4e fans / Big Challenge peeps

What danger?

It took years of extreme edition warring and damage to brand perception to brow-beat WotC into abandoning such designs in favor of the Wand of Empowerment. Do you want to go there? I know I dont.

We learned from 4e the danger of alienating a large segment of our fan base

No, we saw the danger of alienating a specific segment of the fan base. One that was sufficiently invested and privileged for decades, that they could not tolerate change, even for the sake of lowering the games barriers to entry - heck there's an element of elitism to it's appeal.

Philosophically, arguably even ethically, it makes sense for an edition openly predicated on inclusion to try to include you as much as possible, but, in a practical sense it's business goals have already been achieved.

We are not talking here about a subjectively interpretive balance issue like comparing Linguist and GWM - we are talking about the system that drives the fundamental balance in the game to an equivalently great extent as CR ratings.

Yes, we are, and it's important to understand that balance fundamentally anathema to the vision of D&D that 5e must conform to, up front. The 6-8 encounter guideline is there for those who want to impose mechanical balance, and they will have to work hard at keeping their campaigns on that tight-rope.

To suggest Rest specifics and restrictions should not be clearly outlined in modules and other published materials

A module is there to help the DM, so it would be fine to have a linear path presented, for instance, but parties can vary in exactly where they'll balance, too, so it might also mean providing pregens for which the module will have the best chance of working.

then begs the question of why the game designers went into such incredible detail and attempts to balance so many things like CR ratings, classes, feats, powers, and such

That's easy, they didn't, that effort was to capture the games classic feel, and it paid off.

without providing sufficient detail on the much broader balance issue of Rest. It seems it would have been more logical to just let Big DM wave his Wand of Power on that stuff rather than have to do so on the most important balancing issue of all.

They did provide detail, enough details, like the time it takes to rest and the spells players can use to rest at will, to make it likely games will tend towards shorter days and lower short:long rest ratios than the assumed balance-point provided, allowing it to naturally gravitate towards a more traditional D&D experience...

 

[OB1]

Just posted this in the Deadly TOA thread, but as it came out of some of the ideas and discussions here I thought I'd repost as a potentially good solution to introduce as a variant to help enforce game balance

Level 1 - When a rest is interrupted for combat, it must be restarted.
Level 2 - Encounter Point Variant - but allow an 8 hour short safe rest and a 7 day long safe rest
Level 3 - Encounter Point Variant - Only way to recover abilities is through encounters

Encounter Point Variant
Need 3 EPs for a Short rest, 9EPs for a long rest (reduced by 3 for each short rest taken to a minimum of 3)
Medium Encounter - 1 EP
Hard Encounter - 2 EP
Deadly Encounter - 3 EP

 

[shoak1]

Encounter Point Variant
Need 3 EPs for a Short rest, 9EPs for a long rest (reduced by 3 for each short rest taken to a minimum of 3)
Medium Encounter - 1 EP
Hard Encounter - 2 EP
Deadly Encounter - 3 EP

This is essentially what I do except instead of EPs I award the party bonus gp equal in value to 1 magic item of their level as extra treasure each level. So a 7th level party would get 5000 gp extra spread among the 2 full adventuring days of encounters that I have for them to gain a new level. Then because two full adventuring days should provide 2 long rests and 4 short rests, i have each long rest cost 1500 gp and each short rest cost 500 gp. So if they take the expected amount of rests they have neither gained or lost any loot as compared to the original system. (The money is actually used to buy crystals that restore their powers and hp - rest is no longer about bandages and time.)

In essence the treasure is spread as per your EP division between med/hard/deadly. But this way if they want to rest more, they can - but its gonna cost them - overly cautious players will soon find their stock of treasure and magic items being rapidly depleted - conversely if they are agressive and rest less than expected they will have extra money left over for goodies.

I do the same thing re raise dead - the spell at L7 would cost 5k in crystals.

Overall, as a guideline, I award each player 1 magic item every 3 levels, and also 1 magic item equivalent (actually 2 magic item equivalents counting the extra rest coin outlined above) in coin/gems every level for the group in total (of course I spread this stuff among the encounters). So at 7th level the group would get 10,000 coin gems and 1/3 of them would get a magic item. This puts the players more in control of managing their resources, spending it as desired on raise dead, rest, and magic items.

Also this system allows the players to recover after a harder than expected encounter, albeit at a cost, thereby helping smooth over the occasionally easier or more difficult (DM oops lol) adventuring periods.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I think the broader point here is the unsatisfactory nature of solutions to GAME SYSTEM balance issues always being the waving of a Big Empowered DM's +20 Wand of Power. I think too many of you are just failing to realize the danger in alienating those of us Gamists / DM light / 4e fans / Big Challenge peeps who at least want the MAJOR elements of the game balance to be drawn from the system itself rather than from arbitrary decisions from Big DM or creation of work-arounds or other options. We learned from 4e the danger of alienating a large segment of our fan base - yet it appears nothing has been learned from that debacle. For all the talk of The Game To Unite Us All, it's pure rhetoric ("Where's the beef" is the somewhat dating-of-myself expression that comes to mind).

We are not talking here about a subjectively interpretive balance issue like comparing Linguist and GWM - we are talking about the system that drives the fundamental balance in the game to an equivalently great extent as CR ratings. To suggest Rest specifics and restrictions should not be clearly outlined in modules and other published materials then begs the question of why the game designers went into such incredible detail and attempts to balance so many things like CR ratings, classes, feats, powers, and such, without providing sufficient detail on the much broader balance issue of Rest. It seems it would have been more logical to just let Big DM wave his Wand of Power on that stuff rather than have to do so on the most important balancing issue of all.

To put it another way, balance in the game system is derived from the combination of the Ying (the relative power between PCs and baddies, expressed as CR ratings vs level) and the Yang (the expected amount of activity and resource management derived from rest patterns). The designers have put a great deal of effort into the Ying, and almost nothing into the Yang. As the Ying and the Yang are necessarily intertwined mechanisms, THAT renders the Ying virtually irrelevant. Players should not have to rely on Big DM to fix this gaping hole at the top of the food chain - it should come from the game itself that we paid good money for! THAT is the Elephant in the room we are discussing herein...

(Steve smiles and braces himself for the expected vigorous flow of XP this remarkably well-structured and cogent argument shall surely bring....)

Dude, so many problems. Your definition of balance is incomplete, and presupposes your playstyle as a basis (and is incomplete even there, as you don't address pillar balancing or character balancing at all). You do hit on a point that 5e has done a poor job of rest/recovery/ability recharge pacing, but, then, that's not exactly revelationary in this thread, is it? The whole premise of the thread is that. You haven't built a cogent addition, you've just pointed out it doesn't work well without heavy adjudication, which, again, isn't novel in this thread.

I did enjoy the bit about not alienating your kind of gamer though, with the unspoken but dire consequences for doing so. That was a nice touch. Because no one else (like me, who doesn't engage an antagonistic DM vs Players playstyle) remotely could care about balance. You've made the mistake of thinking that because you think Thing A, and Thing B, that Thing A is in any way required to think Thing B. You'd classify me as a Big DM (which is a ridiculous categorization) and I definitely think WotC dropped the ball on encounter pacing and recovery. Not in the 'you shouldn't get everything back on a long rest' front, because I don't care, but in the ease with which the base ruleset allows for rests. The pacing is off.

 

[Lanefan]

Like how, as usual in 5e, the modules seem to ignore all aspects of resource management almost universally.

Overblown rhetoric aside, this is by no means unique to 5e and nor is it a new thing. In fact, through all of D&D's history - all editions, all versions - there's very few published modules that pay any attention at all to resource management; and those few that do are usually doing so only because resource management is key to the specific module (e.g. A4 in the slavers' dungeon). The 5e module writers are thus simply following what has become accepted practice - hard to blame them for that.

The construction of the second sentence of Long Rest does not reasonably imply that an hour of combat is needed to interrupt a Long Rest, ergo any combat interrupts a Long Rest. From an "official" point of view we might feel wedded to Crawford's ruling on that and say that only one entire hour of combat breaks a long-rest. This is patently risible and I frankly ignore Crawford on this point.

From this and some other "rulings" that have come out I'm starting to wonder how much forethought really goes into them, or whether they're just immediate off-the-cuff responses (that ultimately cause more headaches than they fix) to internet questions.

This is one where Crawford might want to overrule himself at some point.

Lan-"the longest 'normal' combat I've ever run went 38 rounds (which is about 19 minutes in my system); I've had army-size engagements go longer but who rests during those?"-efan

 

[Ovinomancer]

Overblown rhetoric aside, this is by no means unique to 5e and nor is it a new thing. In fact, through all of D&D's history - all editions, all versions - there's very few published modules that pay any attention at all to resource management; and those few that do are usually doing so only because resource management is key to the specific module (e.g. A4 in the slavers' dungeon). The 5e module writers are thus simply following what has become accepted practice - hard to blame them for that.

From this and some other "rulings" that have come out I'm starting to wonder how much forethought really goes into them, or whether they're just immediate off-the-cuff responses (that ultimately cause more headaches than they fix) to internet questions.

This is one where Crawford might want to overrule himself at some point.

Lan-"the longest 'normal' combat I've ever run went 38 rounds (which is about 19 minutes in my system); I've had army-size engagements go longer but who rests during those?"-efan

I think the ruling is because it's the most forgiving reading of the rule, and to fix it, given the terrible wording, it would take errata. Given the point in the game lifecycle and the already established expectations AND the general avoidance of any errata, I wouldn't expect a correction or update anytime soon. You may, however, get some optional rules in Xanthar's.