D&D 5E (2014) Have the designers lost interest in short rests?

[Asisreo]

But then they will have to buy a quiver and arrows with the pocket change they get from their background.

That's 2 gp worth, so its not that big of a concern.

 

[Don Durito]

That's probably not what happened.

What's likely is that they specifically asked for feedback on the game from local communities and their playtest team over the years and matched that feedback with the ones that surveys had said.

The designers specifically don't listen to anyone on forums since they recognize its such a small area of D&D players.

Not convinced. The whole history of 5E feels like you've got a whole lot of desginers who really want to swim, but the last time they jumped straight in the water it was far too cold. So now they're slowly putting a toe in, then a foot, and maybe a knee, to see how it goes.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

While Encounter powers were the precursor to Short Rest powers, they went too far, resulting in samey combat. It was, however, a decent idea. Now a short-rest PC has to decide whether or not to expend her short-rest powers. That's good. Similarly 1E - 3E and now 5E encouraged the 5-minute workday, which is, again, bad. Short-rest recovery discourages the 5MWD, which is good. Somewhere there's something good waiting to be found.

What could be more samey than many of the 5e classes in combat? I mean, rogues just literally do the same thing over and over (well, they could cast spells, maybe, but probably they will cast the same cantrip over and over in that case). Battlemasters and Champions both have very few options. A BM, like mine, OK he has 3 combat maneuvers, but one of them really doesn't count (Evasive Footwork, nice but very situational). The other maneuvers mostly feel the same, they each just have a minor rider. I basically use them for the extra d8, the other part is just 'sauce' (and often irrelevant). Once per short rest I can 'alpha strike' and burn my action surge for a third attack. That's IT. Talk about spam, the DM barely needs to even ask me what I do! Monks, pretty much spam. Our paladin, a little more versatile, but still spends a lot of time just spamming "hit it with my mace, divine smite!" etc.

4e combat was vastly more varied than 5e is IME. The end of the worst dragged on slugout in 4e was basically identical to every combat round almost ever in 5e!

 

[Charlaquin]

That's probably not what happened.

What's likely is that they specifically asked for feedback on the game from local communities and their playtest team over the years and matched that feedback with the ones that surveys had said.

The designers specifically don't listen to anyone on forums since they recognize its such a small area of D&D players.

They actually actively solicited feedback from the official D&D forums during the playtest. I‘ve heard they did during 4e as well, but I didn’t visit the forums at the time so I can’t confirm or deny. The change to no longer listening to opinions on forums seems to have coincided with deleting their own forums.

 

[Quartz]

I'm almost level 5 with my current BM, and it is really getting kinda boring at this point! I have basically one shtick where I blow action surge and a superiority die as a sort of 'alpha strike' and then its just mostly deciding between using another superiority die or not with each attack from then on. Frankly one of my combat maneuvers is vastly superior to the other two, 95% of the time, so I really just have 2 things I do, make my attack and bonus attack (two weapon fighting) or the same plus rolling an extra 1d8 damage and granting the next guy advantage (assuming I hit, and that seems pretty easy to do).

Try asking your DM to let your Action Surge last a number of rounds equal to your Proficiency Bonus. And change your manoeuvres if they're not working for you.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

the "plot power" point assumes perfect omniscience on the part of a wizard player who needs to balance int mod+wizard level prepared spells against spells they manage to collect in their spellbook and every possible situation they might come into contact with. Back in the 3.5 days when you had vancian magic it meant that level x y & maybe z had a niche spell that could really save the day where the marginal cost to pull that ace out of their sleeve was to devote one of the possible 1-4 slots for that spell level to that spell

I played from OD&D on, so yeah, I know Vancian 5e's casting is a lot more versatile. You can bend spells to different slots, you can always use all your slots no matter which spells you have 'memorized', plus you have rituals, which obviates even memorizing stuff like Detect Magic (you might do so anyway, depending on your needs, but not doing so doesn't make it unusable).

But the real thing is, plot power isn't about what you can whip out at the spur of the moment when trundling through the dungeon. It is more about how when you're all sitting back in the tavern figuring out how to beat the dragon, the key is ALMOST always some spell trick or other, and often there will be 2-3 real enabler spells. Of course those are going to be memorized, or employed before engagement, or committed to a scroll! Back in 1e days "Questioner of All Things" would do exactly that, just memorize line of battle spells, and put everything else on scrolls. Always had that wacky oddball spell. Items also helped a lot there, as they pretty much became the go-to for basic combat 'casting'. 5e DOES tone it down a bit, but not that much. The wizard is still boss man if he wants to play smart.

Warlock still has huge spell lit overlap with the wizard to further erode the "plot power" argument, but w hen they changed how spells were prepared so preparing a niche ace in the hole spell has the same opportunity cost as a daily driver bread & butter spell they can expect to depend on most sessions or long rest to long rest. It doesn't help matters that they over used concentration, energy resist, lowballed damage & all sorts of stuff to thwart linear fighter quadratic wizard in a no feats no magic items game & wound up inverting it in a normal game with both while the wizard/sorcerer/etc is still left with a quiver of spells that are generally almost good enough to just keep pace at their best.

Well, I wouldn't strictly limit the plot power to just wizard. It is a trait of full casters in general. Though wizards are the typical examplar of it. Clerics and Druids have a share in this act as well! I'm less familiar with the Warlock and Sorcerer in play, they seem like their spell selections are a bit more 'tactical', but I'm sure it also applies there to an extent.

I did NOT find, in the game I played a Transmuter Dwarf, that I was just keeping up with the fighters! Not at all! I'd say I was feeling fully their equal in combat, and outside combat I was pretty boss. I do tend to have a mind for exploiting my wizards, but I also think they benefit a LOT from magic items. Anything that will let you free up slots for those edge cases and non-combat situations is gold.

Yes they can start with it, but the fighter chooses from "chain mail or (b) leather, longbow, and 20 arrows" & is more likely to choose the chain mail while a paladin can choose from "
a martial weapon and a shield or (b) two martial weapons" & is again not likely to choose a long bow because they aren't really a ranged class & the javelins are probably good enough to help the raged types until things are close to melee if it comes up. If they find that a longbow is needed so often that they really need to invest in dex & longbow combat thy can do that later but probably don't at level 1. Your 1st level spotlight example wasn't just an niche abstraction it was an isolated white room example so far removed from actual play as to be irrelevant. Concern about the spotlight at level 1 is so minimal even in a game that drags things out like my precovid campaign where the party spent about three months of weekly games just surviving & gathering basics before reaching first level. I believe they were 4-5 within a couple levels of hitting first. Wotc can't balance casters other than warlock against the assumption of perfect omniscience 100% of the time both in the adventure the gm plans as well as against other players... They certainly can't do it assuming that the resulting just keeping even at peak vrs at will with normal gameplay where magic items & feats are a thing so it works with no feats no magic items if their HCs rain down magic items & new books keep releasing more feats as they have.

Eh, starting with the leather option is a perfectly valid choice. That is exactly what my fighter did! I just built a primarily DEX based fighter. Heck, he's a melee type to boot, but even so chain wouldn't have increased his AC any to start with, and he can get good effect with the bow, and uses it on a regular basis. I have no plan to stop using light armor, it works fine. My AC isn't the highest in the group, but it is only a tad behind the paladin, and I can dish out a real lot of damage in almost any situation, whereas she's really only good in melee and REALLY only top tier against undead (we have met a lot of those, so she's pretty happy).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

They actually actively solicited feedback from the official D&D forums during the playtest. I‘ve heard they did during 4e as well, but I didn’t visit the forums at the time so I can’t confirm or deny. The change to no longer listening to opinions on forums seems to have coincided with deleting their own forums.

I was on those forums a lot, they really didn't seem to read them. CERTAINLY the designers didn't dive in and have a good look at the various ideas and critiques of things they were putting into the playtests and their own design articles. They NEVER EVER responded to anyone. So the perception, and I think it is largely accurate, is they never really engaged. They would through out some very leading questions in the form of a 'survey' and then come back in a week or two and announce the 'results', which were always pretty much exactly what was pre-ordained.

Now, that isn't to say that they ignored their in-house and "friends and family" play testing. The problem there is playtesting really mostly is like building PoCs in the software world, you've already chosen the solution. Your choice may be proved to be genuinely bad in some unanticipated way, and thus get changed, but you are unlikely to stumble upon some really genuinely good way of doing things that you didn't think of on day one.

I think they could have definitely profited by having a couple designers get on those forums and look for ideas and commentary which was useful and insightful, there was definitely some that was. The best could have been flagged and looked at in more depth and maybe engaged on. It is POSSIBLE, because Paizo DOES do it. Definitely did with the original PF anyway...

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Part of the issue here is that the most natural time breakdown for resource management in rpgs is the game session. This does have to figure in to calculations.

If you're doing lots of social interactions with an average of one combat a night (sometimes two, sometimes none, not particularly unusual to my experience) then it could be 6 weeks between long rests. This means that you have abilities you may be using once every 6 weeks (assuming you play weekly - if fortnightly longer), at a certain point the game is going to strain under that long a refresh time, and it's almost certainly going to creep shorter.

Not trying to be contrary, but I'm just not understanding how the game session time has anything to do with resource management in-game. Real world time does not (necessarily) correspond to in-game time in any set ratio. Players track their resources on their character sheets and then recharge as appropriate when a short or long rest opportunity comes along. A day in the game takes as long as it needs to take, whether the PCs engage in no combats or 10 combats. That could be 1 session or 6 sessions or there could even be several in-game days during a single session. Not sure how 6 sessions in real life being one day in-game is a strain on the game. Can you say more about that? Is there a concern that players will get upset if their PCs can't use (or at least have available) all their abilities every session? Sorry, I'm probably missing something here - it's just never been an issue at any of our tables in the last 5+ years.

The only thing I can think of is some are playing West Marches style, where it really makes sense to have the in-game action end with a long rest at the conclusion of the session as all PCs are back at "home base" so any possible combination of players and PCs can participate next session.

 

[Dausuul]

Honestly? The most effective tool for the playerbase to have any effect on game mechanics is to complain loudly about how terrible the game is, and stop buying new books. As long as people keep buying whatever they put out, they have no reason to actually address anything.

If you really, really want to try and "officially" salvage this edition? I dunno, maybe an aggressive letter-writing campaign? It worked for Star Trek.

It is true that a boycott is a very powerful tool to force change.

But a boycott requires a large number of people--far more than the forumgoers at ENWorld--to be annoyed enough about the issues with 5E to dump the whole game. And they aren't going to, because most of them are having a fine time playing D&D and like 5E perfectly well and are looking forward to the next release. The issues that drive forumites crazy, they either don't notice or shrug and live with. You can tell because 5E continues to sell like gangbusters.

Unless you can rally such a large movement, boycotting 5E is just you personally choosing not to buy 5E material. Which may be the right choice for you, I don't know--that's your call. For me, it would be throwing out three or four babies to get rid of a few cups of bathwater.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Try asking your DM to let your Action Surge last a number of rounds equal to your Proficiency Bonus. And change your manoeuvres if they're not working for you.

The maneuvers WORK, they are just all basically "do an extra 1d8 damage and..." where the ands are situational and not excessively differentiated. 99% of the time Distracting Strike is 'the right move', and now and then I have used Riposte, which is basically a 'front loader' that lets you achieve more rapid deployment of your SDs when you're going 'all out'. I think I've used Evasive Footwork once or twice to get in or out of position. Looking at the other maneuvers, I think most of them are usable, though some are pretty situational. I can definitely see building a PC around Commander's Strike, Rally, and/or Maneuvering Attack. Still, you will pretty much do the same stuff every round. I note that this is fairly true of our barbarian and paladin as well. They have a couple options most rounds, but each round is quite similar really.

It was definitely different playing a wizard! There were certainly a good number of times when "fire a cantrip" was the obvious choice, but there were always a wide variety of options, and most rounds were different. 4e fighters are a lot more like that, IME.