Level Up (A5E) End the 5 minute work-day by making all classes work off short rests.

[tetrasodium]

I suppose whatever the refresh rate on abilities is, there will be players who burn through everything and want a refresh after every encounter. Doesn't matter if it is short, long, 5 minutes or a week, they'll want that refresh.

In that situation is say its on the adventure designer to account for this. Either put the adventure on the clock, restock the dungeon with more monsters, or just make every encounter tougher assuming everyone quill nova every time. Mix up those options for each adventure (or section of adventure).

System design is an important part of it though. Too often 5e drops the ball, gets the balance wrong, or just leaves an entire subsystem unfinished and pawns it off on the gm. Yes the gm plays a role in that stuff you mention, but when a small fraction of classes are so obviously designed for making the most of 5mwd its unreasonable to say that its just something that the gm needs is handle.

 

[ThatGuySteve]

System design is an important part of it though. Too often 5e drops the ball, gets the balance wrong, or just leaves an entire subsystem unfinished and pawns it off on the gm. Yes the gm plays a role in that stuff you mention, but when a small fraction of classes are so obviously designed for making the most of 5mwd its unreasonable to say that its just something that the gm needs is handle.

I agree that better design is needed, all classes should benefit from both short and long rests. Managing how often they are taken is outwith the designers power, unless they tie it directly to something like short rest every 2 encounters, long every 6, but that feels too meta for me.

DMs will be the ones on the ground saying yes or no, so the adventure design needs to give guidance on how to handle that. The adventure designer might be a professional writer for a published adventure or it might be the DM for a homebrew game. That is the person who needs to say these are the consequences of taking a 1 hour test, these for 8 hours.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

So I have a novel idea. What if rests required spending XP. Short rests cost less. Long rests cost more. Town rests in a safe place are free. Now no one wants to rest other than at town!

That could be an idea I can appreciate, personally.

But, if the thread on carrying limit is any indication, I still the whole XP calculation is becoming a little passé, giving way to Milestone XP or Story Milestone.

One way I could see is if the A5E as some sort of metacurency. I'm partial for stacking Inspiration and having the party share a pool. This way, the DM could also have a ''pool of Inspiration'' that can be filled by certain method (Rolling a 1, PC suffering a crit instead of the +damage die, falling to 0 etc) like when the PC take a short rest, the DM add 3 Inspiration to its DM pool, 7 for a long rest.

That way, if the group rest too much, the DM will end up with an awful lot of Inspiration to give the players disadvantages or his monsters advantages.

But metacurrency in RPG are a really big point of contention in the community.

 

[ThatGuySteve]

How about a Momentum mechanic. The parties momentum increases after each scene that they move closer to their objective, either fighting, social, exploration. When they take a rest, momentum drops back to 1.

Each class could have some at will feature tied to momentum so that it gets better as their short and long refresh abilities are drained.

A barbarian could add momentum to weapon damage 1/turn as they get. Casters could get boosts to cantrips (not that warlocks need it). Etc

Then it becomes a balancing act between wanting back that 1/day power or getting a smaller boost to every action.

 

[DND_Reborn]

How about a Momentum mechanic. The parties momentum increases after each scene that they move closer to their objective, either fighting, social, exploration. When they take a rest, momentum drops back to 1.

Each class could have some at will feature tied to momentum so that it gets better as their short and long refresh abilities are drained.

A barbarian could add momentum to weapon damage 1/turn as they get. Casters could get boosts to cantrips (not that warlocks need it). Etc

Then it becomes a balancing act between wanting back that 1/day power or getting a smaller boost to every action.

I like the concept. Maybe the momentum mechanic could be used to refresh features? For example, Second Wind might cost 1 MP (momentum point?) and Action Surge might cost 3 MPs.

I just don't know if people want to track another mechanic... So, you could work momentum into the features. Something like when your momentum is 2, your Second Wind refreshes?

 

[glass]

How about a Momentum mechanic. The parties momentum increases after each scene that they move closer to their objective, either fighting, social, exploration. When they take a rest, momentum drops back to 1.

Each class could have some at will feature tied to momentum so that it gets better as their short and long refresh abilities are drained.

A barbarian could add momentum to weapon damage 1/turn as they get. Casters could get boosts to cantrips (not that warlocks need it). Etc

Then it becomes a balancing act between wanting back that 1/day power or getting a smaller boost to every action.

Interesting idea. It would be tricky to balance it such that momentum made it worth pushing on a little longer, without being so strong that people are keeping going for a dozen or more encounters and gaining a level every day.

_
glass.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

I like the concept. Maybe the momentum mechanic could be used to refresh features? For example, Second Wind might cost 1 MP (momentum point?) and Action Surge might cost 3 MPs.

I just don't know if people want to track another mechanic... So, you could work momentum into the features. Something like when your momentum is 2, your Second Wind refreshes?

Oh yes. One could make momentum into the equivalent of 13th Age escalation die.

 

[FrogReaver]

That could be an idea I can appreciate, personally.

But, if the thread on carrying limit is any indication, I still the whole XP calculation is becoming a little passé, giving way to Milestone XP or Story Milestone.

One way I could see is if the A5E as some sort of metacurency. I'm partial for stacking Inspiration and having the party share a pool. This way, the DM could also have a ''pool of Inspiration'' that can be filled by certain method (Rolling a 1, PC suffering a crit instead of the +damage die, falling to 0 etc) like when the PC take a short rest, the DM add 3 Inspiration to its DM pool, 7 for a long rest.

That way, if the group rest too much, the DM will end up with an awful lot of Inspiration to give the players disadvantages or his monsters advantages.

But metacurrency in RPG are a really big point of contention in the community.

Yea, I'm not a big fan of meta currency. And you are right, I often use milestone leveling for ease. But I certainly would be willing to switch to traditional XP if that meant the 5MWD problem was solved.

 

[ThatGuySteve]

Interesting idea. It would be tricky to balance it such that momentum made it worth pushing on a little longer, without being so strong that people are keeping going for a dozen or more encounters and gaining a level every day.

I think the balance would be in hit points. Unless you have a lot of healing spells, wands, potions, etc, you'll eventually need a short rest to spend hit dice. Momentum could also be capped at some point (maybe 5), so you aren't getting mega bonuses.

I did think of it in terms of 13th Age escalation choice, and a little bit like momentum from Ironsworn.

I wouldn't tie refreshing abilities to a momentum cost, that gets a bit too fiddly and each player has to track momentum individually. Have it as a party resource that isn't spent for the benefit of 1 character.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Yea, I'm not a big fan of meta currency. And you are right, I often use milestone leveling for ease. But I certainly would be willing to switch to traditional XP if that meant the 5MWD problem was solved.

Me too!

Though I, myself, already use the Pool system for Inspiration instead of just 1 inspiration/player. It makes it easier for them to remember Inspiration and they love to add tokens in the pool, so they tend to play their Ideals/bonds/flaws a little more than they did before. They even have an Inspiration pool for the followers/npc/whatever.

And added bonus, when they are low level, I can put a token in my pool instead of adding the crit damage (we use the max-damage on first die +1 rolled damage die houserule), to avoid 1-shot-ing them into oblivion.

I took those idea in the soon-to-be-released Beowulf 5e from Handiwork games. It comes with nice little pool where you put your token (Green for player, Red for DM, blue for Followers). Note: my players are plagued by ADHD, so having visual aids help them focus.