D&D General IS the 5 min work day a feature or a bug?

[Mort]

Depending on what you mean by "D&D style," you probably don't.

Vancianesque fire and forget spells, which 5e tweeked to fire and lose slots - but it's still heavily attrition based.

4e "solved" this by having ALL classes on the same attrition model - but it's still an attrition model.

So this is actually a fairly tall, difficult undertaking.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I don't even understand what people mean by non-attrition-based? All resources refresh after every encounter? Meaning only mechanical stakes is death, and once you get resurrection magic (which you can use limitlessly, as no attrition) there are no mechanical stakes other than TPK?

 

[Mort]

The "world is supposed to react" line also doesn't work nor track.

The difference between (A) spending 80% if your resources on Floor 1 and 20% on the trek home and (B) spending 20% if your resources on Floor 1 20% on Floor 2, 20% on Floor 3, 20% on Floor, and 20% on the trek home are

1. You went to Floors 2-4 and could have gained treasure there
2. The stuff on Floors 2-4 could have killed you.

Outside of time limits, competition of other groups, or a restrictions on number of entry, there is no benefit of doing a whole dungeon in one attempt. The smart plan is to keep coming back and chipping away and the defenses and hoard.

But the world is reacting here. Players are reacting to the condition in the dungeon and the dungeon is reacting to the players.

Though, of course, dungeons are their own weird special case and environment.

 

[Greg Benage]

I don't even understand what people mean by non-attrition-based? All resources refresh after every encounter? Meaning only mechanical stakes is death, and once you get resurrection magic (which you can use limitlessly, as no attrition) there are no mechanical stakes other than TPK?

Yeah, a "mana" system, for example, that refreshes at some rate when you're out of combat. Typically magic such as resurrection isn't going to be available simply through expending mana. Maybe you have special rules for ritual magic.

 

[Cruentus]

I really recommend people who have an issue with this trying gritty rests, and if that's not enough, make it so that the week of long rest must be in 'sanctuary'. This way it becomes much easier to have the world move on and impose consequences if the PCs rest all the time.

My players had all kinds of problems with using the Gritty Rests for obvious reasons (to them).

The next game I run, I'm going to modify it more like AiME 5e, where a long rest can only be taken in a "safe" place where you are not keeping watch and/or sleeping on the floor. So, an Inn, a hamlet, your home base, etc. But not in a dungeon (a fave of my players), the middle of the forest, Leomund's Hut, etc. I'm still determining how many short rests to allow each day...

The other I'm currently working up is time based healing and spell point recovery (if using that variant). So it won't matter if you long rest, short rest, or take a vacation to the Bahamas, you get your stuff back when enough time passes.

A challenge for me is that there are so many abilities from various sources attached to characters currently, its fairly difficult to develop around all the possibilities.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Outside of time limits, competition of other groups, or a restrictions on number of entry, there is no benefit of doing a whole dungeon in one attempt. The smart plan is to keep coming back and chipping away and the defenses and hoard.

And the denizens of the dungeon will just let you do that, week after week until they're all dead? They don't build more traps, hire mercenaries, compete their dark ritual summoning a pit fiend, follow the PCs and ambush them, or if all that fails just pack up and leave with their treasure leaving the characters empty handed? No one else will try to exploit the weakened state of the dungeon? Nothing else will happen that will complicate the PCs lives? What a bizarre static world!

 

[Minigiant]

I don't even understand what people mean by non-attrition-based? All resources refresh after every encounter? Meaning only mechanical stakes is death, and once you get resurrection magic (which you can use limitlessly, as no attrition) there are no mechanical stakes other than TPK?

There are other models like Acquistion Based (Some resources are spent while other resources are gained) or Consequence based (Resources can be used more freely but you might get cosequences if used too often)

 

[Greg Benage]

My players had all kinds of problems with using the Gritty Rests for obvious reasons (to them).

Mine did too. It slowed the pace of the game to a crawl, which I didn't expect. They'd get through a few encounters and then become extremely cautious about stirring up any trouble because they just didn't have any sense of how long it'd be before they could take a week off.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Yeah, a "mana" system, for example, that refreshes at some rate when you're out of combat. Typically magic such as resurrection isn't going to be available simply through expending mana. Maybe you have special rules for ritual magic.

But if the mana can run out and you need to wait for it to replenish then that is attrition!

 

[Cruentus]

Mine did too. It slowed the pace of the game to a crawl, which I didn't expect. They'd get through a few encounters and then become extremely cautious about stirring up any trouble because they just didn't have any sense of how long it'd be before they could take a week off.

Mine wouldn't even give it a go. And in my game, there was a lot of cross country and ship based travel, so it wasn't like there wasn't a lot of downtime that could have counted (if I was going to go for pacing, rather than RAW). The problem in my game was the NOVA, and I couldn't get to 6-8 meaningful encounters a day and have it be 'realistic' in the world.