D&D (2024) 4e design in 5.5e ?

[Garthanos]

And this is a great example of presentation vs mechanics.

Presentation wise, your right there are narrative differences between surge and hit dice.

They could have been heroic surges... more generalized from the start ie the concept of spending one for an auto success when it really really counts (aka basically like the SC context) could have been introduced directly in skills.

 

[Stalker0]

I also would be interested to see a return to the 5 minute rest concept, though I think that is too big a change for what they are considering.

Dnd's current model is "steadily drain away resources until encounters are actually a threat". I would rather it be "characters are consistently strong....until the story says their not"

This is where things like fatigue and life drain etc come into play. Maybe there are conditions that prevent a short rest, maybe the current terrain prevents it, perhaps getting too close to a legendary monster creates an effect that hinders resting, etc. Aka make the narrative assumption that players always short rest after a fight....but gives the DM tools to thwart that mechanic when its narratively appropriate and you actually do want the players to "run out of gas".

I think this creates a much smoother curve than the current model.

 

[Stalker0]

Also a reasonable number to choose from rather than the like, 20 there are now with some character builds that literally have no worthwhile feats to take and have to be bored to death by bigger numbers.

I agree here. I had a long debate with one of my players about 5e vs 3e feats. They said 3e feats were better, and step by step I was able to break that notion, showing them mechanically how most 5e feats were stronger, often more flavorful, etc.

At that point I really got to the heart of their complaint....there simply were not enough feats, the core feats just didn't cover enough areas, and this is an area where the slow pace of splatbooks has been keenly felt.

 

[Ovinomancer]

And this is a great example of presentation vs mechanics.

Presentation wise, your right there are narrative differences between surge and hit dice.

But mechanically? They are extremely similar. Both represent "a finite reserve of recovery" that requires some measure of "rest" to utilize. They are of course not exactly the same, healing surges scaled based on hitpoints and were mainly based on class/con score. Hit Dice are mainly based on level with some adjustment based on class. Also most healing in 4e required surges, so it was possible to be "unable to heal". In 5e, magical healing does not require hitdice, so healing is "theoretically infinite" with the right resources.

But its quite clear that the hit die concept came out of healing surges, they mechanically serve a very similar purpose.

No, they only resemble each other in a very superficial sense -- you can spend them to recover hitpoints. That's the extent of the comparison, though. Healing surges were a pacing mechanism while hit dice are not. Healing surges where used to power both self and other PC healing options, hit dice don't. Healing surges individually represented significant healing reserves, hit dice do not (outside of very low levels). Healing surges were used to power some magic items and non-healing class powers, hit dice are not. Healing surges were used as a cost for failure (again, pacing), hit dice are not.

The only place they are similar is that when you take a rest, you can expend both healing surges and hit dice to regain hitpoints.

The very big difference is how healing surges were THE pacing mechanism for 4e and how hit dice have very little to no impact on pacing in 5e. Running low on hit dice isn't really much of a concern in 5e, whereas it was the signal to look for an extended rest in 4e. Prior to this, you were fine in 4e to continue pressing. This alone makes a huge difference between healing surges and hit dice -- they serve as a fundamental part of the structure of 4e throughout and in 5e they're there alright.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I also would be interested to see a return to the 5 minute rest concept, though I think that is too big a change for what they are considering.

Dnd's current model is "steadily drain away resources until encounters are actually a threat". I would rather it be "characters are consistently strong....until the story says their not"

This is where things like fatigue and life drain etc come into play. Maybe there are conditions that prevent a short rest, maybe the current terrain prevents it, perhaps getting too close to a legendary monster creates an effect that hinders resting, etc. Aka make the narrative assumption that players always short rest after a fight....but gives the DM tools to thwart that mechanic when its narratively appropriate and you actually do want the players to "run out of gas".

I think this creates a much smoother curve than the current model.

In my ideal DnD, after thinking a while about it, I want powers recharging not on short rest or long rest, but on both.
Abilties and spells should be proficiency bonus per long rest, but limited to 1 or 2/short rest.
That way, you can conserve power over the day, but you can't nova on a single encounter day.

In this model, a 5 min short rest would be sufficient. Even a 1 minute short rest might usually do it or maybe even a single round of taking a breather.

 

[TwoSix]

But when I'm speaking about freedom, I'm speaking mostly of situational freedom, of the freedom to have fluid situations that go across the three pillars. In 4e, I was unable to run a situation that started social, had a little skirmish, degenerated into a chase then went back to social.

Why not? You lost me on this one. I did that all the time in 4e. I've had multiple sessions go without any combat in 4e, also. 4e doesn't include any explicit guidance as to how to transition between types of scenes, but neither does 5e.

I ran 4e just like I've run every edition of D&D I've played (going back to 2e); I make up a scene, the players tell me what they want to do, and we go from there. The only major difference was 4e had saw less spell use outside of combat (rituals and skill checks filled in here instead), and 4e combat was less frequent but more compelling.

 

[Stalker0]

In my ideal DnD, after thinking a while about it, I want powers recharging not on short rest or long rest, but on both.
Abilties and spells should be proficiency bonus per long rest, but limited to 1 or 2/short rest.
That way, you can conserve power over the day, but you can't nova on a single encounter day.

In this model, a 5 min short rest would be sufficient. Even a 1 minute short rest might usually do it or maybe even a single round of taking a breather.

You wouldn't even need to go with a full rest restriction, we can look at the Fighter's action surge for your concept here.

When a fighter receives their second action surge, they cannot use more than one on the same turn (to prevent the nova you mentioned). You could extend that to say "no more than once per encounter". So in effect we are creating a super short breather. A character can use their ability in nigh every fight, but can only affect one fight with that ability....afterwards they at least need a minute or two to catch their breath and recover.

You can do that by a formal 5 minute rest, but you could still do it with the 1 hour short rest..... that rest is used for hitpoint recovery whereas characters still get most of their abilities back "after each encounter".

 

[Malmuria]

Also most healing in 4e required surges, so it was possible to be "unable to heal". In 5e, magical healing does not require hitdice, so healing is "theoretically infinite" with the right resources.

So, just looking this up now, it seems that healing potions required available healing surges to be useful? What is that supposed to represent in the fiction? Are healing potions just glasses of water?

To me, that seems too transparent as other people are saying, in that the game is very obviously telling you that you will have access to X amt of healing and no more, because it does not want encounters to become unbalanced. Whereas in basic/AD&D, doing things to unbalance encounters (say, hoarding healing potions) was the objective.

 

[Charlaquin]

There's a lot I could say about the whole dissociated mechanics thing, but it mostly boils down to "The D&D ruleset has never mapped perfectly onto the fiction. 4E's mistake was that they stopped pretending it did."

(And I'm not being snarky, I mean it; it was a real failure of design. D&D is a game of illusions. The rules don't need to model reality, but they need to help you pretend that they're modeling reality. @lkj's observation that "the innards are too visible" is spot on.)

I don’t agree that D&D rules need to help you pretend that you’re modeling reality, but I agree that the fact that 4e didn’t was a big cause of a lot of people’s distaste for it.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

So, just looking this up now, it seems that healing potions required available healing surges to be useful? What is that supposed to represent in the fiction? Are healing potions just glasses of water?

To me, that seems too transparent as other people are saying, in that the game is very obviously telling you that you will have access to X amt of healing and no more, because it does not want encounters to become unbalanced. Whereas in basic/AD&D, doing things to unbalance encounters (say, hoarding healing potions) was the objective.

Healing potions allowed to regain hp faster, but not much more than you could recover otherwise.
The Odea was that you had about 3 times as many hp as your maximus as a reserve. That limits your power in each fight, but allows you to sustain yourself over a longer day.
5e has a similar mechanic, but 4e was better in that regard.