D&D 5E The Healing Spirit Nerf=Complete Overkill

[dave2008]

Wrryyyyyyy....

The DMG does not mandate 6-8 encounters. I swear nobody ever reads that section for themselves and instead takes someone else'sword for it. Running one big encounter is a bad idea, but running 6-8 is not mandated or promoted by the rules, never has been

Yep, what they really want is about 2 short rest per long rest (roughly) to achieve balance between long and short rest classes. That only requires 2-3 encounters per day. You just need to make those encounters more difficult if you want to challenge the party.

 

[Charlaquin]

Wrryyyyyyy....

The DMG does not mandate 6-8 encounters. I swear nobody ever reads that section for themselves and instead takes someone else'sword for it. Running one big encounter is a bad idea, but running 6-8 is not mandated or promoted by the rules, never has been

Of course it isn’t mandated by the rules. The game’s math is just built around the assumption of 6-8 medium encounters with 2-3 short rests in between. You don’t have to meet that assumption; the game doesn’t fall apart if you have more or fewer encounters per day on average and/or you raise or lower the difficulty of some encounters. But knowing that’s the baseline assumption is useful for planning adventures. It lets you know that if you only expect to have 2-3 encounters in a given day, the players’ resources will only be taxed 1/3 as much as normal, so you might want to increase the difficulty of the encounters to compensate. Or don’t, it’s your game. But it’s better to break the system math knowingly and intentionally than to get blindsided when an adventure is way easier or way harder than you thought it would be.

 

[Azuresun]

Of course it isn’t mandated by the rules. The game’s math is just built around the assumption of 6-8 medium encounters with 2-3 short rests in between. You don’t have to meet that assumption; the game doesn’t fall apart if you have more or fewer encounters per day on average and/or you raise or lower the difficulty of some encounters. But knowing that’s the baseline assumption is useful for planning adventures. It lets you know that if you only expect to have 2-3 encounters in a given day, the players’ resources will only be taxed 1/3 as much as normal, so you might want to increase the difficulty of the encounters to compensate. Or don’t, it’s your game. But it’s better to break the system math knowingly and intentionally than to get blindsided when an adventure is way easier or way harder than you thought it would be.

There's a lot of assertions there, any sources? Because literally, all the DMG says is that parties can handle (not "should have") 6-8 Medium or Hard encounters before needing to rest, more if they're easier, fewer if they're harder.

 

[Charlaquin]

I'm not sure how it was "fixed," but would the solution just be to limit the duration to 30 seconds or whatever is "balanced."

They limited the number of times it can heal (I don’t remember how many times off the top of my head, but it was something like spellcasting modifier +1 times). Which directly addresses the out-of-combat conga line exploit, but in the process ended up nerfing its in-combat value exactly the same amount. So, it’s still more effective to use out of combat, which to me was always the bigger problem than the sheer amount it healed.

 

[Charlaquin]

There's a lot of assertions there, any sources? Because literally, all the DMG says is that parties can handle (not "should have") 6-8 Medium or Hard encounters before needing to rest, more if they're easier, fewer if they're harder.

It’s evident from analysis of the math. Also from experience playing the game.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

That's not the problem. The problem is actually pretty deep. Short rests were supposed to fix the five minute adventuring day, but they haven't done that at all, and the 6-8 encounter recommendation carries it's own problems.

1. Encounter require time to play, especially if you use a battle grid. 6-8 encounters means setting up 6-8 encounters. If you're only able to play 3-5 hours a week, it's actually somewhat reasonable that you don't have time to fit in 6-8 encounters unless you're literally running 6-8 connected rooms. Yes, even if they're at half difficulty like 5e encounters are. Sure, you could use two game sessions to split one adventuring day, but my experience is that few game groups do that. Most game groups want to start a session at the end of a long rest so that they don't have to remember their character state from a week or two ago at the start of the next session.

2. Because 5e encounter difficulty is heavily lowballed, 6-8 encounters can be extremely easy, not challenging, or not interesting. In some groups, the players can feel like combat is a waste of time in a game primarily about running encounters. This means the group will just run fewer, more challenging encounters, but this has it's own problems because it eliminates one of the ways 5e tries to encourage you to short rest.

3. There is no reason to short rest. Or, rather, there is no reward for not long resting and playing through more encounters in a day. Since the game still has attrition elements like long rests not recovering all hit dice, the cost of a short rest is often not a lot lower than the cost of a long rest. Since a long rest does everything a short rest does and more, the only reason you ever really need to short rest is when you're under time pressure, which simply isn't appropriate for every adventuring day in every campaign. Worse, if your campaign has real time pressure, then you often run into situations where the players can't short rest, either!

Yeah, all of this!

1. Is particularly important, because 6-8 encounters really is a hell of a lot of time, and it feels like 1 day = 1 session is kind of how D&D should work, at a minimum, if not more than one day per session.

It kind of just moves the old 4E problem around. 4E had the problem that, especially as you leveled up, combat took a really long time (3E had it too, arguably worse, but that's a more complex discussion so let's stick to 4E), and so a session could easily be dominated by, say, two combats. Usually they'd be pretty engaging and everyone would have a good time, but it still felt a bit messed-up when a 3-hour session was basically two 1hr+ combats.

5E shortened combat massively. In theory, you're down to like, 15 to 30 minute combats. Except, if you're supposed to do 4+ of them per character-day (assuming maybe another 2-4 non-combat resource-using encounters), you may well end up in a really similar place, just instead of two combats dominating the session, four do. The same issue is prevalent, just slightly more broken up. It feels a bit better, but not a whole lot better.

And yeah re: 3. I've noticed that whoever is DMing, whatever the adventure is, whether it's homebrew or pre-written or whatever, the number of situations where you can safely do a 1-hour short rest, but not safely do an 8-hour long rest is pretty small. It's not non-existent, but it's small.

EDIT - One of the DMs I play with is remarkably good at getting 6-8 encounters/day and making it feel legit, and not run on too long (he's not even the most experienced one), but even he cannot reliably create situations where short rests are viable and long rests are not. Instead it usually ends up that neither is, because an hour is a bloody long time to take a breather.

 

[Charlaquin]

Yeah, all of this!

1. Is particularly important, because 6-8 encounters really is a hell of a lot of time, and it feels like 1 day = 1 session is kind of how D&D should work, at a minimum, if not more than one day per session.

It kind of just moves the old 4E problem around. 4E had the problem that, especially as you leveled up, combat took a really long time (3E had it too, arguably worse, but that's a more complex discussion so let's stick to 4E), and so a session could easily be dominated by, say, two combats. Usually they'd be pretty engaging and everyone would have a good time, but it still felt a bit messed-up when a 3-hour session was basically two 1hr+ combats.

5E shortened combat massively. In theory, you're down to like, 15 to 30 minute combats. Except, if you're supposed to do 4+ of them per character-day (assuming maybe another 2-4 non-combat resource-using encounters), you may well end up in a really similar place, just instead of two combats dominating the session, four do. The same issue is prevalent, just slightly more broken up. It feels a bit better, but not a whole lot better.

I believe this was the intent. Shortening combats to about 10 minutes on average was one of the major design goals of 5e. I believe the 6-8 encounter medium day was extrapolated from that 10-minute medium encounter benchmark, figuring you’d get an hour to an hour and a half of combat per session.

And yeah re: 3. I've noticed that whoever is DMing, whatever the adventure is, whether it's homebrew or pre-written or whatever, the number of situations where you can safely do a 1-hour short rest, but not safely do an 8-hour long rest is pretty small. It's not non-existent, but it's small.

Short rests should really be 5 minutes and between every encounter instead of 1 hour twice a day. But they got a lot of feedback during the open playtest that players didn’t want rests (even short rests) to ever be an assumed thing; you should always have to weigh your options, and rest only when you feel you really need it. And so, short rests became 1 hour pretty early on and stayed that way.

EDIT - One of the DMs I play with is remarkably good at getting 6-8 encounters/day and making it feel legit, and not run on too long (he's not even the most experienced one), but even he cannot reliably create situations where short rests are viable and long rests are not. Instead it usually ends up that neither is, because an hour is a bloody long time to take a breather.

I don’t have much trouble with it. I just roll for random encounters once per hour in dangerous locations. So, a short rest in the dungeon is one roll for random encounters, while a long rest is 8. Makes short rests much more appealing in comparison.

 

[clearstream]

There's a lot of assertions there, any sources? Because literally, all the DMG says is that parties can handle (not "should have") 6-8 Medium or Hard encounters before needing to rest, more if they're easier, fewer if they're harder.

The numbers join up quite well. If you look near the end of the DMG there is a statement on sessions per level, and then if you divide out encounters into the XP you'd need to level and read other language on expected encounters per session - you end up with values that support that 6-8 statement being the baseline.

 

[Flamestrike]

Let's assume the players are in The Temple of Nasty Things, delving away into the dungeon, and they don't have a ticking clock*. The players don't have healing spirit, or goodberries, or healing potions, or someone with aura of vitality, or any other way to recover lost hit points effectively.

This party has access to Leomunds Tiny hut, but somehow lacks Hit dice to heal, and has no other access to healing magic or potions?

 

[Flamestrike]

Sure, you could use two game sessions to split one adventuring day, but my experience is that few game groups do that.

That's on those groups then. They're the ones that have somehow conflated 'adventuring day' with 'game session.' That definition isn't in the rules anywhere.

It's up to the players to record resource expenditure (slots, smites, rages, HP loss etc) as they progress. It should be written down on their character sheet what their curent HP, HD, slots used etc etc are.

It's not like the have to remember anything from session to session. It should all be written down, and if it's not, that's the DMs fault for not policing it.