D&D 5E A mechanical solution to the problem with rests

[FrogReaver]

What I just learned: Duration based abilities pose a problem in any modified rest system as well.

 

[mflayermonk]

What I just learned: Duration based abilities pose a problem in any modified rest system as well.

What did you find out? Was the spell Mind Blank?

 

[KarinsDad]

As a bonus, the OP's idea would curb systematic abuses like that, as well, yes.

It's actually not an abuse. Animate Dead only lasts 24 hours, so it is a design feature for the Necromancer to cast the spell day after day after day. He isn't getting any additional undead, he's just keeping the ones he has.

That hadn't occurred to me - I was too focused on the elephant in the room, I guess.

Hence, forum message boards.

I learn more here than I do reading the books.

 

[Tony Vargas]

It's actually not an abuse.

Seems like it to me. Like taking a Second Wind every hour, on the hour. Technically legal, but not the point.

 

[KarinsDad]

Seems like it to me. Like taking a Second Wind every hour, on the hour. Technically legal, but not the point.

Are we talking the same thing here?

Animate Dead is designed to allow the caster to have 4 wimpy undead (CR 1/4 skeletons or zombies) active at the same time. It is designed for him to lose control after 24 hours, so if he wants to maintain control on up to 4 undead, he has to cast the Animate Dead spell again every single day. If he wants to maintain control on up to 8 undead, he has to cast the Animate Dead spell again twice every single day. 3 times for up to 12 undead, etc.

Sure, he can have a small army of relatively weak undead, but he is using up multiple 3rd or higher level spell slots to maintain that army every day. The NPC Cleric can come up and wipe out the entire army with a single turn. The NPC Wizard can come up and wipe out the entire army with a single Fireball (assuming that they are close enough to each other).

This is all by design. This is not abuse. Are you talking about something else?

 

[clearstream]

Again, I disagree with your premise. The range of a magic missile isn't really a guideline. It's presented as a mechanical rule. Encounter building is a guideline, and they emphasize it as such, whereas they do not such thing with something like a spell description. There is a difference, and it's important. Which goes back to me saying you're taking those guidelines too literally and reading way too much into them. So if this discussion goes nowhere, it's only because you're treating suggestions as the same level of literalness as hard rules. Flawed basic premise.

*Edit* I just pulled up my DMG and looked to support my position. For one, right in the introduction, the DMG tells you that the PHB is rules, and the DMG is a guide to help you as the DM "adjudicate the rules", and to "give advice" on how to run the game. Also in the introduction it says right up front to tailor your adventures to fit the players' styles. Then in the encounter section itself, it's littered with phrases like "might", "may", and "likely". Then of course, the title of the book is called Dungeon Master's Guide. So clearly there is a distinction between something like a spell description or how a class feature works, and how encounter guidelines are just that--guidelines you may adjust as needed or desired.

Please reread what I wrote. I started down one path then, before you replied, corrected myself to focus on the salient points.

What about guidelines prevents them being important to game balance?

 

[clearstream]

The first problem with tying rests to levels is that the number of adventuring "days" between adventures varies. So you'd need to have the rules change at different level tiers.

How does your criticism here take effect, mechanically? Rest are tied to levels and levels are tied to encounters. The first couple of levels take about 1 adventuring day worth of encounters (so 2-3 short and 1 long rest). The next ten take about 2 adventuring days worth of encounters. The last several take about 1 and half adventuring days. So the chart ramps then is fairly flat (hence gaining more at level 5).

Making it simple like "you have two long rests and 5 short rests each level" just means at low levels and high levels you can still rest whenever you want. Having to consult a table is awkward, and mandates everyone be the same level.

Do you foresee that players will refuse to rest when a colleague wants to, because they don't want to expend any recoveries? (Note that they can rest with their colleague without spending recoveries, so you're assuming they just object to stopping!) A table with two entries (2 minor 1 major, 4 minor 2 major) is within the abilities of gamers to recall without looking it up, don't you think?

It won't work with the published adventures though, because those have story based levelling. So you have fewer encounters per level.
It also won't work well with any campaign that uses quest experience, or awards experience for bypassing encounters without combat.

It'll make those slightly easier, if player milk their recoveries for maximum value. That feels like a far cry from "won't work"?

IIt has the usual flaws with any system that firmly limits the number of rests based on an arbitrary criteria (number of encounters, amount of xp gained, time adventured, or, in this case, level): it's not reactive to the story and bad luck with the party

What happens when someone gets poisoned, turned to stone, cursed, diseased and the party needs to rest to prepare different spells?
What happen when they take a bunch of damage from the environment? Or traps? End up exhausted after travelling through the jungle?
What happens when the party takes and unexpected amount of damage in a fight, when the DM rolls well and the players roll poorly?
What happens when the party accidentally triggers two combat encounters at once and gets badly hurt?

If the rules make no allowances for the party to rest earlier than expected, then they risk being forced into a situation where they have to continue to adventure at significantly reduced power and risk a TPK, ending the campaign.

Good points worth raising. I considered the bad luck aspect against practical experience and believe that it makes very little difference to the rest situation. Percentually, players fail very few encounters and giving them greater control over rests will likely make the rests they do take more effective.

Exhaustion has to be tweaked both for the Gritty Realism option in the DMG, and for this system. It needs to be recovered from resting 8 hours or more (and whether or not a recovery is spent). That's one problem you quickly discover when you use Gritty Realism in a campaign that has a lot of overland travel!
Bad luck (unexpected damage, rolling poorly etc) is fine. Reflecting and looking at my notes from years of campaigns, I honestly believe that your concern here is overstated. In the worst case, deaths and TPKs, the affected characters can't benefit from rests.
Several people have raised a criticism of the "what about when encounters vary in number or danger?" kind. More dangerous encounters grant more XP, so the system naturally adjusts itself by bringing next level closer.

Your point about spell preparation is a great one. Say we use Gritty Realism from the DMG. Same problem! So do we let spell preparation lock us into only using 8 hour long-rests? I find myself running into this sort of issue a lot with D&D. The system is very sophisticated and highly interconnected. That's something I believe @Sacrosanct needs to take into account. The guidelines on encounters are entwined with the whole system! Anyway, on the point of spell prep: as a game designer my approach would be to test the system without trying to accommodate that first, to see how big of a problem it really is. I know in my present OOTA campaign only once has the party rested to change spells. I would then craft a tweak proportionate to the scale of the issue. My prediction is that it comes up only very occasionally, and can be handled well with a limited resource like Arcane Recovery.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Are we talking the same thing here?

Yes, from very different PoVs.

Animate Dead is designed ,,.for him to lose control after 24 hours, so if he wants to maintain control, he has to cast the Animate Dead spell again every single day.

So there's a clear downside to the spell, it creates monsters that you can't control forever...
...except that you pretty much can, by systematically casting every day. A system or ruling that monkeywrenches that kind of abuse restores the limitation, just like time pressure, linear plotting, or the OP's system restores the limitted-uses that are so easily undermined or let slide. Two birds &c..

 

[pming]

Hiya!

Well, in my Hackmaster campaigns I implemented a sort of "daily fatigue" type of thing. In short, every "minor exertion" and every "major exertion" gave you a set amount of "down time points", so to speak. This amount was totalled and subtracted from the characters CON. When it reached 0, the character could get to sleep.

Example: A character with a 14 CON. Every hour of being awake and normal activity gave 1 point. After being awake for 14 straight hours, the character could sleep if he wanted to. If he had to do some heavy lifting for a half hour, helping the bar keep move ale, hay, food for the cellar, etc, add 2 for that hour. If he got in a fight with three thugs that evening, add 3 more. So, effectively, he had (14 - 2 - 3 = ) 9 hours of being 'awake' that day before he could go to sleep. If he was in a dungeon all day, and had 4 fights after 3 hours of exploring...that's 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3, so 15 hours of being awake...one hour OVER his normal amount of 'wakefulness'. He NEEDS sleep. The guy with 20 con? He's still got 5 hours before he even gets to the "I'm kinda beat" stage.

What did this do? It basically made it so the players had to think about what they were (and weren't) going to do that day. It also was a bit of an annoyance for the guys with really high CON's! But then again, that's when spells like Dispel Fatigue and Sleep come in handy!

For 5e, you could easily implement something similar. The more healthy you are (CON score), the harder it would be for you to get to sleep. So there would be none of this "well, it's been 20 minutes in this dungeon and we've been in three fights...time to sleep for 8 more hours" bull-crap going on, that's for sure!

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Caliburn101]

Awful, awful idea that hog-ties a game so closely to the formula that the DM has no say over their own game pacing.

Terrible...