D&D 5E Lets talk about getting rid of "recover all spell slots on a long rest"

[Sadras]

Level 4 areas are beyond the normal. Physical characters have access to the finest care and medicine. Arcanists have access to magical libraries or laboratories. Divine characters have access to a church of an aligned deity or a sacred natural space.

• Short Rest Allowed
  • Short Rest in 10 minutes
• Long Rest Allowed
  • Gain all hit die
  • Advantage in one skill or tool ability check for next 24 hours
  • Extra Attack grants another attack within next 24 hrs if you long rest 3 days in a row.
  • Can cast one spell of level equal to a third your spellcasting level for free within next 24 hrs if you long rest 7 days in a row.

Level 5 areas your specially made headquarters. You must pay 100 gp per cumulative level to stock the area with books, training equipment, sacred items, and other items and rituals personal to you and your skills.

• Short Rest Allowed
  • Short Rest in 10 minutes
• Long Rest Allowed
  • Gain all hit die
  • Advantage in one skill or tool ability check for next 24 hours
  • Extra Attack grants another attack within next 24 hrs if you long rest 3 days in a row.
  • Can cast one spell of level equal to a third your spellcasting level for free within next 24 hrs if you long rest 7 days in a row.

Besides the gold cost there is no real difference in the benefits/requirements between your level 4 and level 5 areas.

 

[MichaelSomething]

If the game had notions of being an extrovert, perhaps. But in general, I don't like to impose personality types in mechanics.

Overall, this is in the space of resource management that's getting fiddly for my tastes. Back in the day, we used the AD&D rules for regaining spells. The overwhelming majority of the time, the party chose to wait for the spellcasters to be ready before they went back into the fray. The result was just that resting time was longer than 8 hours, but nothing about it was more interesting.

And, that's the core of it - if the rule isn't more interesting for the players... I don't see it as a constructive addition.

I thought the point of reducing spell slot recovery was to make it easier for the DM to challenge/enforce attrition on the players?

5E PCs have so much recovery available DMs are unable to wear them down using fictionally plausible battles. Of course, if you don't mind a PC party encountering around two hundred monsters a week, it's not an issue for you; but it is for a lot of DMs.

 

[Rellott]

I thought the point of reducing spell slot recovery was to make it easier for the DM to challenge/enforce attrition on the players?

5E PCs have so much recovery available DMs are unable to wear them down using fictionally plausible battles. Of course, if you don't mind a PC party encountering around two hundred monsters a week, it's not an issue for you; but it is for a lot of DMs.

This is what I was assuming as well. To that end, I was thinking of a potential solution. I have not implemented this and don’t know if I will - I just thought of it while reading this thread.
At the end of a long rest, the caster regains spell slots whose levels add up to the caster’s total caster level. So a 5th level wizard could regain a level 3 and a level 2 slot, or 2 level 2s and a level 1, etc.

 

[Coroc]

Lets talk about getting rid of "recover all spell slots on a long rest"


Nope.

 

[Don Durito]

First 10mins a level isn't really that punitive. It's not serious enough to really make tracking the time all that relevant. A 20th level wizard would still get all their spells back after about 15 hours of study. It's not too different to the reasonably common, from what I can see, long rest variant of 36hours. Which seems simpler. And for most of the length of time of most campaigns it's only a few extra hours. At level 9 it takes 6 hours to recover all your spells (and if you can rest for eight hours you can probably most of the time manage 14)

It also turns 1st and 2nd level wizards into effectively short rest classes.

People are praising 1e a little too much for this. If you want to do this I think you have to lengthen the time somewhat - I'd go for something easy to track like 30 minutes per spell per level or 1 hr. For the former, that's an extra 18 hours to recover all spells, and for the latter 36 at level 9. This is getting more serious*.

The big thing to consider is what you want to do with Arcane Recovery and the Druid equivalent - as if not all spells are recovered overnight they become effectively a very cheap method to get few more and disrupt class balance with classes that don't get a similar power (it's crap like this which really gives the lie to whole notion that 5e is a modular and easily hacked system - everything you do affects something else). One way to somewhat mitigate this is to say that these powers can only recover slots that have been spent the same day.

Another option is to treat spell slots like HD and say you only recover half during a single long rest. Just calculate it by caster level. So at level 1 you recover 1 spellslot; level 2: 2; Level 5:10 and at level 20 you recover 45.

Personally I think the solution needs to be tailored to main activity in the campaign.
For dungeon crawling I wouldn't change anything.
For wilderness exploration I would use a kind of rough rest as I mentioned in the other thread, where you recover some things (basically spell slots equal to arcane recovery amount and 1 HD).
For a primarily urban adventure I would consider upping spellslot recovery times to 30 minutes or 1hr.
For mixed campaigns, I'd be going with the variant that matches what I would consider to be the bulk of the activity.

*Yes, it's fiddly, but I can't help thinking that people who play primary casters really need to be able to deal with fiddly, or they'll just be slowing the game down for everyone else anyway. In any case, if the fiddliness is going to be worth it, then the length of time has to be significant enough to make tracking it worthwhile.

 

[Minigiant]

Besides the gold cost there is no real difference in the benefits/requirements between your level 4 and level 5 areas.

Oops.

Level 5 is supposed to be.

• Gain all hit die
• Advantage in 2 skill or tool ability checks for next 24 hours
• Extra Attack grants another attack within next 24 hrs if you long rest 2 days in a row.
• Can cast one spell of level equal to a third your spellcasting level for free within next 24 hrs if you long rest 5 days in a row.

You are supposed to be a bit overpowered after resting in your own privately curated sanctuary. However out in the wild, you rest terribly.

Note: All these benefits are available to enemies and NPCs.

 

[DEFCON 1]

If the idea of discouraging novas and then getting everything back is still an issue... another option is to simply give the Warlock's spellcasting to every class. You only get a few spells known and only can cast like two spells (at your highest slot level) every short rest. You still have cantrips should your fight last more than like 3 rounds and the casts need more to do... and if need be you could also give all casters the equivalent of the Ritual Caster feat so that each PC can have rituals (in their ritual book) outside and separate from their Spells Known selections.

This will put most classes on the same short-rest recovery timetable which will make for easier decisions on whether to move on or not. Plus it separates spell recovery from hit point recovery thus cutting down on the number of times PCs will want to take long rests.

Obviously some players might find the idea of only getting to cast 2 "big boom" spells per combat a little disheartening... but better that then them casting 5 "big boom" spells in one combat (plus a whole heap of Shields for defense) and then demanding the group long rest so they can get everything back.

 

[cmad1977]

This idea doesn’t add anything meaningful.

 

[Umbran]

I thought the point of reducing spell slot recovery was to make it easier for the DM to challenge/enforce attrition on the players?

The intent and the effect are not necessarily the same.

When considering any rules change, we have to look at unintended consequences - in this case, a change in player behavior. They are going to seek rest, especially if you make it clear that the point is to enforce attrition - because that means right after the rest, you're going to push. They are going to want to be ready for that push, and will act accordingly.

What ensues is likely a sort of antagonistic race between players and GM, over whether they get the rest or not. I am not sure that's the dynamic anyone desires.

I am not sure why playing with spell recovery is preferable to adjusting encounter difficulty.

 

[TwoSix]

I'll just repost what I posted in the other thread.

Honestly, I think most of the tools already exist in the 5e framework; you simply need to dump neo-Vancian casting to achieve this (which is probably a bridge too far in traditional D&D).

1) Make deployable offensive and defensive resources a shallow pool, but charge more quickly. The warlock is our model here, or the fighter or monk. Short rest resources primarily, or once per encounter. (Regain 1 dice on initiative is per-encounter in all but name, and a concept like "regain focus" or "take a breather" taking 1 minute can easily be put into the system and fulfills both simulationist and gamist agendas.)

Ideally, the goal here is what you bring into a fight on offense is roughly the same in any fight, although a chain of quick fights can become difficult quickly.

2) Long-rest resources are used for restoration and repair, or for non-combat utility. Leveraging the ritual system is particularly useful, and could use expansion.

3) Short rests keep the PCs in fighting shape, but cause weariness (Spend Hit Dice to regain hit points). Long rests alleviate weariness (Restore Hit Die). Out-of-combat healing magic should be tightly constrained to reinforce this loop.

4) Deeper attrition is handled by consumables. Going into a dungeon where you might not be able to long rest requires preparation in the form of healing potions and utility scrolls. Access to this function is constrained either by tight financial constraints for a simulationist agenda (potions cost money and special reagents, the best source of money and reagents is found in the more dangerous places) or by metagame currency for a gamist agenda (replace money with a metagame currency like XP).