D&D 5E Are Per Rest Resources a Hindrance?

[delericho]

EDIT: Let tables decide for themselves, like long rest above, are short rests (between encounters) - 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 1 hour or a day.

I'd advocate going even further than this and encouraging the DM to vary the duration (and availability) of rests - 8 hours sleep is a long rest while tucked up in a nice warm bed in the inn, but when stuck in the middle of a danger-filled forest in a hailstorm it's only a short rest.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The 5min(or 15) work day is simply a group preference, and no amount of rules will change that if the group do not come to agreement beforehand.

This is trivially obviously wrong.

The simple proof is that in no other RPG do things work this way. You've played other RPGs? I assume so. So you know it's not true. It's not about player agreement, it's absolutely, provably, demonstrably, as a matter of objective fact caused by the rules.

Again look at other RPGs, ones which don't slap all your abilities on to a long-rest recharge (so basically any RPG not derived directly from D&D). You do not see the same pattern. Like, ever. Whereas any D&D-derived RPG, where tons of resources are on long-rest? You get this pattern.

So that is proof-positive this is caused by the rules, and can be prevented by different rules.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

If that's the outcome of ignoring it, you're doing timing imperatives wrong*.

The outcome of ignoring it should be something like "that NPC you guys love will die," or "the trove of magic items you want so much will be lost." DMs shouldn't threaten consequences they aren't prepared to follow through on.

*Unless the answer is "Yes, I will blow up the campaign." That's a hardcore answer, but totally legit.

Whilst this works, the trouble is, it's not usually fun, and it gets old extremely fast with intelligent players (or at least ones who aren't drinking lol) who are thoughtful about metagame concepts and/or game design, because they very quickly understand what you're doing. It's transparent, if you keep using time-threats just to try and stop players making the obviously most intelligent decision, which the rules are basically designed to make them want to take.

So I'd suggest that, in real groups, at least those who have people who think about game-design etc. this should be used only sparingly and logically, and you keep doing it regularly, the amount of fun they're having is likely to decrease.

It's also why designing 5E around 6-8 encounters/day was fundamentally a bad idea. It would have been a lot smarter to move to design around say 2-4 or even 1-3 encounters/day, because that gives DMs an absolute ton more flexibility, and it fits much better with what the rules make players want to do.

 

[payn]

I've never liked the idea of encounter powers. Not in 4E, 5E, and now PF2. So, PB uses per day will be a very welcome option. I also was a big fan of the rounds per day system used in Pathfinder Classic.

 

[Oofta]

Resource attrition and balancing out what you can do has always been part of D&D, short rests just make it slightly more complicated. As a DM there are also many things you can do about this, from using the alternate rest rules to letting people have their 5 minute work day if they want.
I use the alternate rest rules (short rest overnight, long rest a week or more) because it works better for my style and I get in 4-10 encounters that use resources (typically fights) per long rest. For someone else a short rest of 5 minutes might be better. There is no such thing as a perfect system, I find it works for us to have 4-10 encounters between long rests, usually with 1 or 2 short rests.

The 5 minute work day has been a potential issue since the game was released and they decided to have casters with limited resources. While I try to give people hints about how many fights there are going to be and how difficult a specific encounter is, I think there will always be some players who hoard resources no matter what.

 

[Reynard]

A messy hypothetical implementation:
-Spell slots still return after a Long Rest, Pact Spell slots still return after Short Rests
-Non-spell slot Long Rest resources return after a Short Rest now
-Short rest resources relevant to combat return at the end of combat
-Short rest resources not relevant to combat remain as they are
-Enemies receive some kind of universal buff, like bonus damage on hit, to even the playing field and force more liberal use of abilities.

Congratulations, you discovered 4E!

 

[GMforPowergamers]

There's a certain pattern I notice some of my players get into frequently that makes me worry about them getting bored and disengaging from the game. It goes something like this:
Me: "It's your turn"
Player: "I walk up and attack"
Me: "Do you have any bonus actions or resources to spend?"
Player: "Yes but I don't want to spend them, I might need them later"
Repeat for 10 turns, for several combats, and then a long rest happens.

I have seen this happen in D&D off and on since 95.

most resent I have played in a homebrew game as a warlock and HAD the fear for the first 5ish levels that I needed to hold my slots for BIG BOOM ENCOUNTERS... even though we were getting short rests.

I not only got around it in my head, but we had a multi class barbarian that had the opposite issue... he would at low level rage 1st 2 fights then complain something wasn't working... around the time I started not caring and using my slots he started to hoard his rages.

to the point that we had a day somewhere around 9thish level that we had taken multi short rests, I had used all my slots every time... and we had like 10ish encounters, and when we took the long rest he still had all of his rages.

I ALSO see it (both as a DM and player) with non renewable resources a lot.... "We should use our healing spells and wands and stuff before drinking potions" that leads to 13th level PCs in the end game having 3+ potions of healing that do 2d4+2 and saying "these don't seem worth it now"... yeah, cause you should have used them 8 levels ago.

This doesn't happen with every group, but for those that do this it makes combat feel uninteresting and downright anemic. I

yup... I miss the 4e encounter power concept... however I also remember "Everyone felt they were still doing the same thing every fight" I almost wish we had MORE type of recharge. "This power/ability/spell comes back every fight, this one takes a short rest, this one takes 4 hours rest or no, this one comes back on a long rest, and this one only recharges weekly or monthly." but I fear that is too complex.

A messy hypothetical implementation:
-Spell slots still return after a Long Rest, Pact Spell slots still return after Short Rests
-Non-spell slot Long Rest resources return after a Short Rest now
-Short rest resources relevant to combat return at the end of combat
-Short rest resources not relevant to combat remain as they are
-Enemies receive some kind of universal buff, like bonus damage on hit, to even the playing field and force more liberal use of abilities.

some classes get "if you don't have any of X when you start a fight regain Y number" at levels and I think that could work.

 

[Stormonu]

@delericho - I really like the idea of amping up XP for the 2nd+ encounter in a day, or (to a lesser degree) unlocking abilities/power/spells that only work after X number of encounters.

Maybe x1 for the 1st, x1.5 for the 2nd, x2 for the 3rd, x2.5 for the 4th, x3 for the 5th. etc. XP for encounters....

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Mostly, its a pacing issue heavily influenced by how the DM handles "downtime" between active moments. I've seen a lot of new DMs be reluctant to allow or simply forgetful about the existance of short rests. Personally, I've decreased short rests to about 15 minutes in my games to encourage their use and recovery, and switched short rest abilities over to PB per day where feasible.

when I DM I play with the time for both LR and SR alot BUT what I hate is that because most of my players are DMs also and all of them play or have played under other DMs (not to mention I DO change them from campaign to campaign as I said) there is a learning curve.

back a few years ago I had a player come in and she was used to a DM interrupting rests (both long and short) often. That DM even ruled (I do not know them but I disagree with how it has been relayed to me by her and another player I know) that if you roll initiative and do not get out of the fight by the end of the 2nd round you need to begin your long rest again.
It took multi sessions for her to be ready to even use resources, even as we had multi short and long rests. When I interrupted a LR with a zombie fight that took 4ish rounds and then let them go back to bed and still get the LR she finally started to realize how different I run from that DM.
When COvid lockdowns struck she didn't continue with us onto Roll20, but in the last few months she has started her own game live IRL and has texted us about it a few times... she is more like me then that DM (but a bit more strict then me). SHe even laughs about how she is trying to get the warlock PC in her game to use his spells slots, because in 2 levels he has only used 1 slot once, afraid he wont have them 'when he needs them'

 

[Composer99]

I've come round to the idea that all non-at-will resources should be on the same rest schedule. Whether that's long rest or short/long rest recharge. Maybe you limit ritual magic on a long-rest basis. (This would let you make some powerful spells into rituals.)

My personal preference is resources refresh on a short/long rest basis, with a "strategic" resource that you spend to refresh them that refreshes on a long-rest basis as your daily pacing tool. Thus endeth the 15-minute adventuring day.