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

[Dausuul]

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.

In reality, time constraints are always present. The assumption that dungeons and monsters will sit passively waiting for you to come in and loot them, and won't react if you take a long break in the middle, is fairly ludicrous if you think about it.

The challenge is that imposing the obvious consequences--either "the monsters haul up stakes and leave," or "the monsters attack you en masse in the middle of the night"--mean taking a lot of the DM's prep work and throwing it out the window. So we come up with these more contrived scenarios. However, I'm coming to think that it's worth throwing your prep work out the window once or twice--because once you establish that those consequences can happen, the players will start pushing on instead of stopping to rest. (Besides, the players will make you throw your prep work out the window anyway. That's what players do.)

It's the George R. R. Martin principle. GRRM doesn't actually kill off major characters very often. But he does it just enough to establish that he can and will do it, so when he threatens death to his protagonists, readers take that threat seriously. 90% of the time he doesn't follow through, but you never know if this time is going to be the 10%.

All that said... I do actually agree with you that 5E leans too hard on daily resources. Some players are good at managing their daily resources and others aren't, and the penalty for the latter is too high IMO. I'd like 5E to have more abilities that refresh on a short rest, and a better distribution of them among the classes.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

The problem with "PB uses per day" is that it encourages PCs to nova and then rest

What is ideally needed is for all classes to have a mix of powers that refresh at different rates, plus strong advice for the DM that the ability to rest should usually be easy but should sometimes be limited in various ways.

But what is also needed is a mechanism that encourages PCs to press on for "one more encounter"

4e had every class have encounter and daily abilities (and at will) but also gave 'action points' and 'additional magic item uses' when you hit milestones after 2 encounters.

I know everyone didn't like it, but I loved it. I think 5e would be much better (and I hope come 2024 with 5.5/6/anniversary edition) if we built more classes like the warlock. (2 subclasses intermixable, a suit of abilities useable 1/2/3/4 times per sncounter/short rest that scale up to 10th level, mini feats that are just for the class, and high level daily resources)

 

[GMforPowergamers]

@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....

I would almost want to start the first encounter was less...

like 1st x0.5 and 2nd x1 and then at 3rd+ increase

 

[Jer]

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.

This is because D&D is, at it's heart, not at all like other RPGs.

Other RPGs are not nearly so concerned with things like an escalating power curve or combat at the center of the game play loop the way that D&D is. Other RPGs either don't have the escalating power curve or don't focus on combat as the central action of the game or both.

I will say - the more you play D&D 5e like other RPGs, the less the 5 minute workday becomes an issue IME. Because if most of your encounters are interaction with NPCs or skill-focused rolls and not so much tracking how many combat resources you have available to you, the game goes on without anyone saying "I need a rest". The more the encounters focus on combat, the more the players decide after a few of them that they'd like to take a rest.

I would actually argue that the potential for a 5 minute workday is at the core of D&D's design and if you actually remove it people will be displeased at the result. However individual tables can actually tailor their use of the 5 minute workday to their own preferences - much like individual tables can choose to emphasize the non-combat portions of the game to their own preferences.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

In reality, time constraints are always present. The assumption that dungeons and monsters will sit passively waiting for you to come in and loot them, and won't react if you take a long break in the middle, is fairly ludicrous if you think about it.

An awful lot of D&D stuff is fairly ludicrous if you think about it, but fundamentally I agree with what you're saying.

All that said... I do actually agree with you that 5E leans too hard on daily resources. Some players are good at managing their daily resources and others aren't, and the penalty for the latter is too high IMO. I'd like 5E to have more abilities that refresh on a short rest, and a better distribution of them among the classes.

Yeah that's the issue I have. 5E is incredibly focused on a 6-8 encounter structure and management of those resources. Different classes have wildly easier or harder to manage resources, and worse, most classes change on how hard they are to manage as you level, become much harder or easier to manage (mostly easier but not always). Warlocks probably offer the best combination of flexibility and fairly steady/low resource management difficulty (Fighters/Rogues are, depending on subclass, mostly even easier but offer typically very little flexibility - 5E Rogues are perhaps the least flexible class in 5E in terms of ability to spend more/less resources on an encounter). This compounds with varying levels of player skill in managing them as you note. This is compounded further by the 1hr """"short"""" (ahem) rest and the fact that a lot of situations that make an 8hr rest "not okay" also make a 1hr rest "not okay". I mean, it's not Jack Bauer can really just spend an entire episode of 24 chilling on the couch, which is what a 1hr rest is (and people know it - admittedly especially my group who came up with that analogy). 5E should have defaulted it to 10 or 20 minutes. It's only less plausible and less immersive to make it so long.

The flexibility thing is kind of a poorly-discussed sub-issue that I think it worth noting. If a Rogue needs to "punch it" in an encounter, i.e. this encounter is obviously super-important, life or death, what can the Rogue do differently to normal? Basically nothing. Every encounter is essentially the same, because they can't expend more resources to do more. Even taking bigger risks with positioning etc. is generally NOT rewarded in 5E, only punished. Fighters are typically similar. There are a few subclasses which can "nova" - most notably Samurai, and it's very obvious how much better those work with both shorter work-days and more "clutch" encounters. The Fighter in my high-level group picked Samurai solely because it was closest to his concept, but as that group actually usually does short work-days, he's actually done really well in a way it's obvious he wouldn't have with say, Champion. Whereas the Rogue, who has nothing to expend, struggles to make as much of an impact as he did in 4E.

I would actually argue that the potential for a 5 minute workday is at the core of D&D's design and if you actually remove it people will be displeased at the result. However individual tables can actually tailor their use of the 5 minute workday to their own preferences - much like individual tables can choose to emphasize the non-combat portions of the game to their own preferences.

The fact that 4E annoyed so many people resource-management-wise tends to support this yes.

I think the real problem is 5E is a poor base for customizing usage of the 5/15-minute workday because it hard-assumes a situation verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry distant to that with 6-8 encounters/day as the base, when 5/15 assumes really 1 encounter/day. Earlier editions made no clear assumption, or a much lower number (I forget the exact one with 4E, but I want to say it was 2-4, feel free to correct me). If 5E was designed around 1-3 or 2-4 as the base, customization would be a lot easier.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I would actually argue that the potential for a 5 minute workday is at the core of D&D's design and if you actually remove it people will be displeased at the result.

it never accrued to me that people WANTED the 5 minute work day concept... this just blew my mind.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

it never accrued to me that people WANTED the 5 minute work day concept... this just blew my mind.

I think it is true though. Like, very few people would come out and say it, because it's taboo to admit it, but if you look at what they're choosing to do, and what they're choosing to play, and the encounters they enjoy, most do actually quite like it when they can blow everything on a really over-the-top encounter.

It's also as I noted, varied by class - some classes/subclasses can't really contribute to the 5-minute workday in 5E. In 4E, pretty much all classes benefited the same exact amount from the 5-minute workday. So it was less popular overall, and less divisive. In 5E, doing a 5-minute workday is a dream come true for pretty much all full casters, and really kind of sucks hard for most Rogue and Fighter subclasses (Samurai being an exception as I noted, Battlemaster is also not totally terrible). Warlocks are sort of in-between.

 

[JThursby]

I also was a big fan of the rounds per day system used in Pathfinder Classic.

Not gonna lie, I never liked rounds/day abilities. They are annoying to track since they each have their own resource pool, and depending on how they scale they either made multi-classing with some abilities the obvious default or a non-option.

Congratulations, you discovered 4E!

Heh, if this was the only thing that made 4E distinct I would have actually played it for more than 3 gruelingly overlong sessions of 1 combat apiece. Too bad the rest of the game is the way it is.


I see a lot of discussion about the 5 minute work day. I have to say, for my part that isn't the issue. Nobody in my groups actually wants to play like that. This is much more about creating a better set of incentives to have dynamic and interesting turns. The reason I look at tweaking the resource systems moreso than just upping the difficulty all around is because it exacerbates the problem of some class options just being overwhelmingly superior to others. I would rather give a set of effective boosts to options and classes that need it rather than just force everyone to retool their character around established 5e optimal builds.

 

[payn]

Not gonna lie, I never liked rounds/day abilities. They are annoying to track since they each have their own resource pool, and depending on how they scale they either made multi-classing with some abilities the obvious default or a non-option.

I didnt say it was perfect, but I do prefer using one rest method instead of multiple. Short or long, please pick one designers!

Edit: Pick one designers not pick on the designers lol.

 

[tetrasodium]

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.

This doesn't happen with every group, but for those that do this it makes combat feel uninteresting and downright anemic. It is annoyingly repetitive and it doesn't use anything on the character's sheet that comes from their class. Character identity is muddled when you don't even bother with most of your features. I understand that character resources are limited by rests for balance reasons, but I have to wonder if it's really worth it when I see it disincentivize using those features at all in the first place. I think it's long been established that the rest frequency rules from the DMG are broken and have no relevance to actual play, so it shouldn't be too much of a stretch to simply ease or remove some of the limitations around class resources.

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.

I haven't gone through all the (probably many) features that this would be broken on and carved out exceptions for them, but in general I would like less reasons for my players to not use their features. If the iconic move of a Barbarian is to rage, why limit their rages to such an extent? Why should a Fighter be so miserly with their Superiority Dice, or a Bard with their Bardic Inspiration Dice? This would also help non-caster martials regain some parity with their caster peers; a Paladin doesn't look so overwhelmingly superior to a Monk anymore when the Monk gets their level in Stunning Strike attempts each combat. And since spells have an absurd ability to dictate the terms of an engagement, plus their unparalleled utility, that keeping them as the one true Long Rest resource makes sense. If any classes should be playing a resource management mini-game it should be the full casters with their large array of "I win" buttons.

That's how it worked in most edition's if d&d till 5e (4e was too different to compare). Those players are holding back so they can unload and save the day when the group is pushed but there are a couple of problems* at the system level robbing them of that chance.by fretting over it rather than giving them that chance from time to time you as the gm are the one wasting those reserved abilities.

The flip side of it is short rest classes in the hands of players who know no setting in combat other than Nova and pout if not allowed to immediately take a short rest the second their tank runs dry. These plants are also denying them that chance but also stealing the thunder that should be there when those pocketed resources are burned because they are doing that every round of every combat while also enjoying the powerful abilities made to support them when rests are thin and the long rest pc is just catching up a little bit if they ever get that chsnce

If everyone is on board with the Nova till rest repeat cycle then it's not a problem, but the fact that some of the players are actively holding back in preparation for things to finally hit the fan is proof that at least those players are not so on board. Not wanting to be the one to tell their fellow players no when the system gives the gm few good ways to ever meet the needs of the players holding back is often a big source of them being superficially ok with the way things are.


* 5e being designed for six to eight encounters just makes it too difficult to ever strain the pool to matter & bounded accuracy+extreme survival odds of even the most thoughtless combat piles on to make it so the pocketed hammer is just meh and even if it could have saved the day it didn't actually pull the group out of any meaningful fires[/B]