D&D 5E Solving the 5MWD

[Sadras]

1. Tie ability recharges to level up. For example spell slots only recharge on level up. Obviously the number of slots needs increased but that should be doable.

Well that would depend on how often a table levels up, right? If a table enjoys a long slog between levels then this would not be a welcoming house rule.

2. Keep healing and hit die mechanics tied to resting - potentially also slow the rate at which you heal through resting.

You're suggesting no in-combat healing? I can see this would make combat more deadly... but I'm not sure how this would change how far the party is willing to carry-on in a day.

Does this solve the 5MWD issue?

5e (from my experience) doesn't seem to have a 5MWD problem.

So your thinking is the player will want to refresh his characters' spell slots sooner and will urge party members to push thus eliminating supposed 5MWD's. I'm not convinced this is the way to go if you want to encourage players to keep pushing.

 

[DND_Reborn]

If you know what it means then are you seriously suggesting it's not possible to blow through most all your resources in a short span and rest and recharge them all?

Of course it is possible, but how is that a problem? It has been possible since the beginning of D&D.

It is a choice. If you run out of resources and wish you hadn't, learn to conserve your resources. If, as a DM, you are tired of characters going nova and then resting, gear your game so they can't.

If you can't accomplish either of those, well, I don't know what to tell you other than this:

I don't think enforcing abilities limited to a per level idea will solve anything. Whether you limit things by short rest, long rest, or level, people can still burn through their resources before intended. Then they will be annoyed because now they have to wait until they level and are less effective until they do.

 

[TwoSix]

Obviously this concept is only workable if the ratio of long rest/level is fairly small. For my own 5e games (both as DM and player) it's averaged a little over 2 long rests per level, so it's fairly workable for me.

It would certainly fit in better in a game where you're using the alternate "overnight short rest, week for a long rest" rules. It also fits in better for a game based on travel and exploration rather than site-based adventuring.

 

[Jer]

I had an interesting idea and wanted to share and hammer out some of the details.

1. Tie ability recharges to level up. For example spell slots only recharge on level up. Obviously the number of slots needs increased but that should be doable.
2. Keep healing and hit die mechanics tied to resting - potentially also slow the rate at which you heal through resting.

Does this solve the 5MWD issue? Are there any foreseeable issues with this setup? Would it be more fun to play this way?

I don't see how the slowing down of healing in the second point does anything to solve the problem. If you have players who have a propensity to 5MWD then all that does is force longer rests into the game, at least in my experience slowing down healing just typically gets these kinds of players to say "ok, we hang around for the 15 years it takes to heal up - let's skip to the game" in one way or another.

As to the first point - I've found that the 5MWD player type goes hand in hand with the "overly cautious" player type. They don't want to push on when they are below their full resources because they never want to enter a combat at anything less than full power "just in case". So what I would expect to happen given that is that my players who have a propensity to want to 5MWD would never cast anything but at-will spells even when they should be bringing out the big guns because they'd be keeping their powder dry just sure that a bigger threat was coming. Until they were close to levelling up and then they'd go nova.

In my experience I've come to believe that the 5MWD approach mostly stems from feeling like you just don't have enough resources to get through a dungeon - an attitude that is engendered from playing lots of D&D at levels 1-5 where you do not in fact have enough resources to get through a dungeon. The one edition of the game where my 5MWD player always felt like they were hitting the right mix of using their resources and being prepared for anything was in 4e - and he's close to feeling that way with 13th Age once you get out of the first few levels where the wizard in his opinion doesn't have quite enough slots to feel like he has sufficient resources.

 

[not-so-newguy]

Rather than changing the rules, I think that making the passage of time an important element in the adventure will do more to mitigate the 5 MWD. I do this by adding Random Encounters checks. The encounters are usually dangerous and not very productive for the group, so this be would something they’d want to avoid. The intended effect of making time important is to spur the group to their goal a little more quickly and not to waste a bunch of time resting in game.

 

[Blue]

I had an interesting idea and wanted to share and hammer out some of the details.

1. Tie ability recharges to level up. For example spell slots only recharge on level up. Obviously the number of slots needs increased but that should be doable.
2. Keep healing and hit die mechanics tied to resting - potentially also slow the rate at which you heal through resting.

Does this solve the 5MWD issue? Are there any foreseeable issues with this setup? Would it be more fun to play this way?

Huge fan of how 13th Age does it, but it slays a sacred cow of D&D to do so. They divorce the narrative of sleeping from power recovery.

Powers in 13th Age are basically at-will, per encounter (so no short rest mechanic for power recovery), or per full heal-up. A full heal up happen every four encounters. Could be an adventuring day, could be three weeks of crossing the tundra, could be a busy dungeon-crawling morning.

A DM can reduce it to three if they feel the encounters were particularly tough. The players can take one early, but at the explicit cost of a campaign setback. Maybe the brigands strike again, the cult finished the next stage of the ritual, or another rancher is infected with lycanthropy.

They do have a quick rest, specifically expected between most encounters and without a set length, for healing naturally.

 

[Oofta]

Huge fan of how 13th Age does it, but it slays a sacred cow of D&D to do so. They divorce the narrative of sleeping from power recovery.

Powers in 13th Age are basically at-will, per encounter (so no short rest mechanic for power recovery), or per full heal-up. A full heal up happen every four encounters. Could be an adventuring day, could be three weeks of crossing the tundra, could be a busy dungeon-crawling morning.

A DM can reduce it to three if they feel the encounters were particularly tough. The players can take one early, but at the explicit cost of a campaign setback. Maybe the brigands strike again, the cult finished the next stage of the ritual, or another rancher is infected with lycanthropy.

They do have a quick rest, specifically expected between most encounters and without a set length, for healing naturally.

There's nothing wrong with this approach, but I basically do that already. It's just codifying what I do narratively; short and long rests only come after n number of encounters. I just do it by adjusting of the story pace with the same result.

 

[TwoSix]

Also, you don't really need to change any character facing rules to support this change. Just give out more caster oriented consumable magic items and permanent items only attunable by casters. More wands, more pearls of power, etc. Maybe make some "mana potions" (which recharge a spell slot) to go along with healing potions.

 

[Blue]

There's nothing wrong with this approach, but I basically do that already. It's just codifying what I do narratively; short and long rests only come after n number of encounters. I just do it by adjusting of the story pace with the same result.

Exactly, though D&D doesn't make it easy with the base resting rules. If I have that three week trek across the frozen tundra, players are expecting a long rest every evening in 5e. Or there are times when there is no time pressure (not every adventure can or should have it) where the characters decided to rest.

That's where codifying it helps.

 

[Seramus]

Since you can only long rest once every 24 hours, the 5MWD is only a problem if you have a small number of deadly encounters per day. The solution is to mix up the number of encounters per day and not always telegraph how many are going to happen in a given day.

Granted, this is exactly the kind of situation that happens during overland travel, but that's why I prefer the 13th Age system.