D&D 5E (2014) If you had to choose: short rest vs long rest

[Horwath]

Refreshing spells on short rest would be best with spell point variant.
Just make 1/3 or 1/4 spell points recharge on short rest.

 

[Xeviat]

Changing the current structure to short rests would greatly empower full casters, even if you divide the number of spells slots recovered. Moving short rest abilities to long rest by multiplying their use would fit much better.

Why do you think full casters would be empowered if their total slots were divided by 1/3rd or they were switched to Warlock casting?

 

[TwoSix]

Why do you think full casters would be empowered if their total slots were divided by 1/3rd or they were switched to Warlock casting?

I can see an argument for it, especially if you have a short rest caster that knows they're going to be able to get their spells back after 1-2 encounters. Having a deep spell capacity is useful in 5e, but not as useful as earlier editions because so many of the strong spells are effectively 1/encounter due to concentration.

Still, I think having the capacity to drop multiple higher-level spells in case of emergency (as a long rest caster does) is still overall a better and stronger option.

 

[Coroc]

Context. With a 6-8 encounter day you need the SR.
If you ask for me to generally chose one of them and leave out the other it is LR of course, because it is kind of more "realistic"

 

[the Jester]

No, I prefer that all abilities not refresh on the same schedule at all. Changing everything to the same recharge timing would require a massive rewrite of the whole game. I think.

 

[Shiroiken]

Why do you think full casters would be empowered if their total slots were divided by 1/3rd or they were switched to Warlock casting?

Warlocks casting might work, but dividing the spell slots won't. How will you divide spell slots with less than 3? Can casters choose which ones to recover (in which they'd take the higher level ones). I tried something similar with dividing by 2, and found a huge issue once you got to 6th level spells. Dividing by 3 is going to be even more difficult.

 

[Zardnaar]

Long rest like it or not it's D&D.

A lot of modern arguements still don't address the root of the problem which was made back in late 90s.

They gave the players to much candy and they got addicted to suger.

They can't fix it because it's become fundamental to modern game design.

 

[FrogReaver]

Refreshing spells on short rest would be best with spell point variant.
Just make 1/3 or 1/4 spell points recharge on short rest.

Spell point variants have their own issues though.

 

[FrogReaver]

One option I've considered for short rest recovery is:

Short rest abilities start with twice their uses after a long rest. A character may recover abilities up to the amounts listed in the PHB when taking a short rest but cannot go over the amount listed in the PHB due to a short rest. This allows them to play well even in fewer encounter games while also not taking away the incentive for short resting or the different resource paces.

Example:
Battlemaster starts day with 2 uses of 2nd wind. 2 uses of action surge. 8 superiority dice.

After the first combat he has 2 uses of 2nd wind remaining. 1 action surge remaining. 3 superiority dice remaining.
The party then short rests. He goes to 2 uses of 2nd win. 1 action surge. 4 superiority dice remaining.

 

[Xeviat]

Context. With a 6-8 encounter day you need the SR.
If you ask for me to generally chose one of them and leave out the other it is LR of course, because it is kind of more "realistic"

This is the thing I'm looking to address. If nearly everything was short rest, or if everything was long rest, then you'd only have to stress about balancing the encounter or the day. Balancing the encounter is easier, in my opinion, because balancing the day requires restrictions on when people can rest. If you do a 4E style game, where a short rest is measured in minutes instead of a full hour, and you expect a short rest after almost every fight (except gauntlet/reinforcement fights), then balancing the feel for easy, medium, hard, and deadly becomes much, much easier.

Take Red Hand of Doom for example. In 3E, a day was balanced around 4 moderate encounters in a day. One of the set pieces is taking out a keep that the bad guys have holed up in. There were 4 encounters set up in the keep, and one couldn't reasonably start attacking the keep then stop to take a rest.

For 5E, players can only really handle 2 moderate encounters per short rest, and need 6 moderate encounters to hit their daily xp threshold; going under that will make an easy day, which then makes it difficult to make the adventure feel perilous. 5E PCs can handle maybe 3 deadly fights in a day, with a short rest between each, but with those taking a full hour, you have to stretch things out.

In 4E, players could handle 4 moderate encounters in a day, with a short rest after each one. That same keep is very easy to convert to 4E.

I can just convert the keep fight as is, and just accept that it will be an overly difficult fight for the short rest resource characters in the party, but balancing all classes around the same point would be far, far easier.