D&D 5E The Resting Mechanics - What Works Best?

[tetrasodium]

That's one opinion.

Another opinion is it does work, you're just bad at making it work.

I mean you are empowered as a DM. From changing rest frequencies (and the game gives you 2 options, and guidance on this very point) all the way to 'Nope, Rocks fall and you all die. Lets watch TV instead'

Or if you're not empowered as DM, ask yourself why, because it's not the stuff written in the books that is leading to that problem.

In your rush to attack someone's gm skills you skipped past the fact that wotc's own hard cover adventures are not built with a six to eight encounter grind fest either. Actually using the six to eight encounter expectation of o5e would turn a tabletop game into a grind fest beyond words.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Three fights in a dungeon is a mighty small (or very de-populated) dungeon.

It's one that can be reasonable played in one session, with decent amount time for exploration and other aspects of the game. And pacing wise I don't want spend more time in one dungeon than that.

Look at any of a bunch of BX-1e modules - there's way more in those dungeons than just three fights.

I'm sure they do. And I wouldn't run any of them.

 

[Willie the Duck]

No, not per Day. Per Adventuring day.

An [adventuring day] can be a week or even a month of in game time. Its simply the arbitrary amount of time between a 'long rest' recharge of abilities.

That's pretty much reframing the suggestion being made using different terminology. Overgeek was suggesting 'fiddling with rests' while you suggested 'Per Adventuring day,' but the end result is the same: adjusting the system to somewhat force/incentivize 6-8 (or close) encounters between full refreshes.

 

[Lanefan]

No, not per Day. Per Adventuring day.

An [adventuring day] can be a week or even a month of in game time. Its simply the arbitrary amount of time between a 'long rest' recharge of abilities.

True, but when I see the word "day" I parse it to mean (assuming Earth-like astronomy) one light-dark cycle in the setting.

This is one where if the designers really wanted the "adventuring day" to be a more malleable amount of actual in-game time they might have been better served by coming up with (and then sticking to!) a different term for it; much like we use "round" and - in days of old - "turn" to represent not-always-specific amounts of game-world time in relation to the rules.

Dude; Combat is literally 90 percent of DnD's rules. It has an entire chapter devoted to it, 90 percent of all spells are combat related, as are 90 percent of all class features, and the entire Monster manual. RAW it's the only way to earn XP and progress. Encounter design, adventuring day XP budgets etc.

The exploration and social pillars get a paragraph or two in the entire CRB's. The only Narrativist mechanic in DnD is the inspiration mechanic, and that tends to be ignored or forgotten by most groups.

DnD is a combat game. Probably due to its origins as a Wargame, but hey. I dont doubt you find Combat boring, but critiquing the game for including combat is a little like critiquing Monopoly for having money and a banker.

There's a very wide gulf between "including combat" and "90% combat".

That combat gets so much page space while exploration and social (and downtime!) get so little is a well-discussed issue. Then again, combat is a complex part of the game and is also one that - particularly unlike social - has to be completely abstracted, so its taking up more page space than the other pillars is somewhat inevitable.

 

[Lanefan]

It's one that can be reasonable played in one session, with decent amount time for exploration and other aspects of the game. And pacing wise I don't want spend more time in one dungeon than that.

There's the difference: you're trying for one discrete dungeon/adventure per session where I don't really care about session end/start concerns: we just stop where we stop and pick up from the same point next session.

I'm also not hung up on pacing - hell, some nights they might only explore two new rooms of a 30-room dungeon while spending the rest of the time planning or rp-ing some in-character stuff or resting or whatever. Fine with me, as long as the players are enjoying themselves.

I just don't "get" the mindset that wants to rush through everything.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

There's the difference: you're trying for one discrete dungeon/adventure per session where I don't really care about session end/start concerns: we just stop where we stop and pick up from the same point next session.

I'm also not hung up on pacing - hell, some nights they might only explore two new rooms of a 30-room dungeon while spending the rest of the time planning or rp-ing some in-character stuff or resting or whatever. Fine with me, as long as the players are enjoying themselves.

I just don't "get" the mindset that wants to rush through everything.

It's not so much rushing than that repeating the samey stuff over and over gets boring. All those remaining 28 rooms won't be new, exiting and surprising. Also, at that pace you'd spend fifteen sessions in that dungeon, so assuming a session every other week, that's seven months real time spent in one dungeon. I would be bored senseless.

 

[Lanefan]

It's not so much rushing than that repeating the samey stuff over and over gets boring. All those remaining 28 rooms won't be new, exiting and surprising. Also, at that pace you'd spend fifteen sessions in that dungeon, so assuming a session every other week, that's seven months real time spent in one dungeon. I would be bored senseless.

Our average for a dungeon/adventure is about 8-10 sessions with wide variance; and we usually run weekly.

I've both run and played in adventures that have taken over a real-world year to finish; and what I find happens is that the players become focused on the here-and-now and don't worry about the big picture until the PCs get back to town for some downtime. Dark Tower was one such - yes it took a full year to play through but there was always somethng interesting going on.

 

[jmartkdr2]

True, but when I see the word "day" I parse it to mean (assuming Earth-like astronomy) one light-dark cycle in the setting.

This is one where if the designers really wanted the "adventuring day" to be a more malleable amount of actual in-game time they might have been better served by coming up with (and then sticking to!) a different term for it; much like we use "round" and - in days of old - "turn" to represent not-always-specific amounts of game-world time in relation to the rules.

There's a very wide gulf between "including combat" and "90% combat".

That combat gets so much page space while exploration and social (and downtime!) get so little is a well-discussed issue. Then again, combat is a complex part of the game and is also one that - particularly unlike social - has to be completely abstracted, so its taking up more page space than the other pillars is somewhat inevitable.

Also combat can result in character loss in most cases (at least it's possible in almost every combat even if it rarely happens at a specific table), whereas talking your character out of the game is unusual. Ergo, combat has a much greater need to be seen as fair.

 

[Flamestrike]

True, but when I see the word "day" I parse it to mean (assuming Earth-like astronomy) one light-dark cycle in the setting.

I get you think that, but that's not what it means (which you do agree with).

An [adventuring day] is simply the arbitrary amount of time between Long Rest recharge of class features, involving 1 or more encounters between those Recharges.

A week in town, featuring a Long rest every night (and no encounters) contains exactly zero Adventuring days. Conversely an entire week in a hostile environment, with multiple encounters and no effective Long rests (due to the environment or time constraints) is a single Adventuring day.

Once you get that as your baseline, you can then look to modify what a [Long rest] recharge looks like to better fit your encounter pacing (number of encounters your players are expected to deal with in between long rests) to suit your narrative pacing.

If your table has 0-2 encounters most 'in game days', then you should be looking at the Gritty Realism variant - it sets overnight resting as Short Rests, and whole Weeks in town as Long rests.

Using that variant, Adventuring 'days' are likely roughly a month of in game time each, where the PCs deal with 6-8 medium encounters (getting a Short Rest every 0-2 encounters, so 2-3 per Long rest) over the space of a few weeks, falling back to a 'safe space' to Long rest for a Week.

People that complain about the number of encounters are missing the point. Everyone has had roughly the same number of encounters at any given level, and at any given table. The question is 'when do you allow long rest recharges of class features in the middle of those encounters'.

 

[Flamestrike]

That's pretty much reframing the suggestion being made using different terminology. Overgeek was suggesting 'fiddling with rests' while you suggested 'Per Adventuring day,' but the end result is the same: adjusting the system to somewhat force/incentivize 6-8 (or close) encounters between full refreshes.

Yeah, I agree the system could be more elegant. I mean even now like 10 years after release date there are still people struggling with the concept of Adventuring days, encounters and so forth.

I would have preferred an 'encounter neutral' model, where effectively every class feature refreshes after every encounter (including HP, which are reset to half max if lower) and then we wouldnt have this problem (but we also miss some of the advantages the current model provides).

Basically every class works like a ToB class, with spells reskinned as 'manouvers'
I was working on something like that, but keep shelving it to do other things.