D&D 5E Have the designers lost interest in short rests?

[tetrasodium]

The short rests classes should be able to rest roughly every 2 to 3 combats, but NOT after every combat. That is part of the issue.

The fact that it works fine in a very specific model of a dungeon is not a saving grace - it's the crux of the issue. It's inflexible.

Is an hour an exceptionally large amount of time? It's relative. If short rests were four hours the problem would certainly be bigger. Just like making them 5 minutes makes them easier to use. The only problem there is putting the brake on them so the party can't short rest after every combat.

There is also the fact that short rest classes aren't exactly straining to make it a whole day if tests are denied yet can leap quite a bit above long rest classes if tests are plentiful. In one case the short rest class has a class specific cantrip that is objectively better damage than every other damage cantrip and literally casts the same exact spells as the long rest counterparts but with the ability to treat those spells like cantrips if the gm doesn't shape the entire campaign around balancing Bob's munchkin class against everyone else with a long rest class because wotc shrugged off responsibility for just doing thst to begin with when they made the classes.

 

[Charlaquin]

People grouse way too much about the 6-8 encounter adventuring day with 2-3 short rests, IMO. Yes, that is the assumption around which different resource recovery systems are balanced. Yes, inter-class balance is at its best when you stick broadly to this guideline. No, the game will not break if you don’t follow it precisely.

Personally, I plan my adventures around this guideline, but I don’t enforce the sequence, and I allow my players the freedom to break it. I plan around 4-6 encounters per session, and I roll for random complications (which can include encounters) in dangerous areas. The players are free to take rests when they want, but taking the time to do so creates a risk of such random complications occurring. We generally get close to the 6 encounters with two short rests per adventuring day, but sometimes we get fewer, and that’s fine. It’s very rare that we get more, because the PCs are pretty worn down by or before the end of that time. It works fine.

I feel like with a lot of the game balance assumptions of 5e, people have a tendency to either worry way too much about adhering to them, or decide that they’re oppressively restrictive and actively avoid them while decrying them as terrible game design. I think both positions are far too extreme. Treat them like simple guidelines and don’t stress about following them to the letter, and the game will work out fine.

 

[ph0rk]

No, the game will not break if you don’t follow it precisely.

Break, no, but short rest classes (warlocks, battlemasters) will feel weak if a group rushes from encounter to encounter without rests. It is easy enough to do - I am frequently having to push for short rests, in different groups with different DMs; it gets a tiny bit easier if there are more short rest classes in the group, but when there is only one, it sucks. I suppose the one hour part of the rest is a contributor - it breaks verisimilitude, perhaps.

 

[Bacon Bits]

If someone is willing to let me play a 5 minute adventuring day game with a battlemaster that starts with three uses of action surge, three attacks a round, GWM, and 15 superiority die at level 11.... Okay.

I strongly suspect the downloaded nova build paladin in that scenario would be a bit miffed.

That's a straw man. Just because you might discard short rests doesn't mean you have to multiply out how much a class should have for a whole day and give them all those abilities without any thought or consideration. Action Surge would be fine if you were limited to one use every minute or so (with two uses at higher level). Second Wind would be fine if you were restricted to one use every hour. Battlemaster could simply gain dice on a schedule, say 4 plus 1 per level per day. Or they could just get one die every combat round to spend; limit it by saying you can't do the same thing twice in a row. There are ways to remove or deprecate short rest ability recovery in a balanced way. Like the problem isn't that it's too difficult to limit usage in encounters. The problem is not making recovery take an hour and not making each day consist of 6-8 trivial to easy encounters. For some tables the former kills pacing and latter makes combat boring.

However, even setting that aside, if I accept the 5MWD argument at face value it's not convincing here. The game is absolutely interested in preserving the feel of the game world, the overall style of gameplay, and even the narrative backgrounds of certain classes. But I don't see why the game should remotely care that a build has been invalidated. Like it doesn't really care if a Wizard, Sorcerer, Warlock, Bard, Druid, or Cleric casts fireball or cure wounds (or both!) anymore. Why should Paladin be immune from having another melee martial class able to nova?

 

[Charlaquin]

Break, no, but short rest classes (warlocks, battlemasters) will feel weak if a group rushes from encounter to encounter without rests. It is easy enough to do - I am frequently having to push for short rests, in different groups with different DMs; it gets a tiny bit easier if there are more short rest classes in the group, but when there is only one, it sucks. I suppose the one hour part of the rest is a contributor - it breaks verisimilitude, perhaps.

Sure - some days short rest classes struggle more. Other days, they excel. They are very rarely completely under or over powered. That’s a level of balance I’m quite comfortable with.

 

[Don Durito]

People grouse way too much about the 6-8 encounter adventuring day with 2-3 short rests, IMO. Yes, that is the assumption around which different resource recovery systems are balanced. Yes, inter-class balance is at its best when you stick broadly to this guideline. No, the game will not break if you don’t follow it precisely.

Personally, I plan my adventures around this guideline, but I don’t enforce the sequence, and I allow my players the freedom to break it. I plan around 4-6 encounters per session, and I roll for random complications (which can include encounters) in dangerous areas. The players are free to take rests when they want, but taking the time to do so creates a risk of such random complications occurring. We generally get close to the 6 encounters with two short rests per adventuring day, but sometimes we get fewer, and that’s fine. It’s very rare that we get more, because the PCs are pretty worn down by or before the end of that time. It works fine.

I feel like with a lot of the game balance assumptions of 5e, people have a tendency to either worry way too much about adhering to them, or decide that they’re oppressively restrictive and actively avoid them while decrying them as terrible game design. I think both positions are far too extreme. Treat them like simple guidelines and don’t stress about following them to the letter, and the game will work out fine.

I'm bemused that you say you don't worry about following it before revealing that you basically do.

I literally can't imagine getting through 4 combats in a single session.

When I talk about the rest schedule being important, I'm thinking of games with one or possibly two encounters in a long rest.

And there you do notice problems.

Edit: Really by the rules it's not just 6-8 Medium or Hard encounters. It could be 3 deadly encounters or 18 easy ones. The fact that you have to go far beyond deadly to make a single encounter a threat is a big part of the issue.

 

[ph0rk]

That's a straw man.

No it isn't. It was a form of Reductio ad absurdum, which is not a fallacy nor a strawperson argument.

Moving to no short rests requires some adjustment of short rest classes; the simplest such adjustment is to multiply their resources by three.

Since everyone (including you, just now) likes to argue that five minute adventuring days aren't a problem, the 15 sup die battlemaster won't be a problem, because like the other long rest classes, they need to conserve for other fights.


If, on the other hand, it is true that 5 minute adventuring days are quite common at some tables, then there is a balance issue - or is there?

Sure - some days short rest classes struggle more. Other days, they excel. They are very rarely completely under or over powered. That’s a level of balance I’m quite comfortable with.

If it's once in a blue moon, fine (just as if it were only once in a blue moon that a day had 16 encounters). If it is a regular thing, that's less fine, and ratcheting up the deadliness and down the frequency of encounters is a rather common thing - which hurts short rest classes more than anyone else.

Moving away from short rests henceforth would be fine, but sooner or later they will need to revisit all the published classes and subclasses that are balanced around it.

 

[Mirtek]

I haven't played AL in a very long time, but back then short rest classes got the short straw. The modules rarely wen't longer than a single day's worth of encounters and knowing this long rest classed didn't need to show any restraint. The advantage of more frequent use of smaller ressources that short rest classes were supposed to have was basically non-existing

 

[cbwjm]

With the new paradigm tying a lot of abilities to proficiency bonus/long rest I feel like the PHB classes and subclasses need an update to match. Action surge I could see changing to that schedule, and I'm sure a lot of power gamers would take advantage of that, but I think overall it would be a good change. I'm looking at how they have changed the standards used for ability uses and now I'm thinking we need a 5.5e, as much as WotC don't want to do that (and I'm sure many players would not want to do that).

 

[Horwath]

The short rests classes should be able to rest roughly every 2 to 3 combats, but NOT after every combat. That is part of the issue.

The fact that it works fine in a very specific model of a dungeon is not a saving grace - it's the crux of the issue. It's inflexible.

Is an hour an exceptionally large amount of time? It's relative. If short rests were four hours the problem would certainly be bigger. Just like making them 5 minutes makes them easier to use. The only problem there is putting the brake on them so the party can't short rest after every combat.

Why not after every combat?
Just make combats more difficult.

no need for 8 combats a day, if 4 combats with short rest between everyone will do just fine.
No one is interested in "easy" token battle just to fill up the numbers.