D&D (2024) Brainstorming 5 minute work day fixes

[Greg Benage]

I think the biggest “problem” is just how the game is played. You can run a dungeon in 5e and you’ll get your encounters in. Honestly, it works great.

The “problem” is most people aren’t playing that way, published campaigns largely aren’t written that way, and organized play doesn’t work that way.

I don’t know, a flexible system that allows you to match the reset rule to the kind of adventure you’re running? In a dungeon, run it as is. In a more narrative (or travel) arc, something like gritty realism.

We’ve gone to milestone leveling, so maybe milestone resets: “You’ll get a reset when you do X.”

 

[Blue]

Story fixes. Theoretically all it should take is giving the characters something to care about with time pressure and they'll never 5MWD again. That's what people say, but it only works if the players let it.

Every single adventure you ever run always has the exact time time pressure. This isn't a fix for the problem, this is a band-aid that you can use a couple of times but the problem will still persist.

 

[Blue]

A few different options that could be put into place in OneD&D because they are in other versions of D&D or D20 games

Level playing field: Everyone has the same allotment of resources with the same recharge rate. As long as everyone has the same, it doesn't matter in the slightest if it's a 5 minute day - all of the classes are still balanced against each other, and DM can then adjust challenge via the deadliness of encounters. 4e did this, with charactes having (outside utilities) the same amoutn of at-will, encounter, and daily powers.

Recharge out of player reach: If the players can't trigger a long rest during an adventure, this problem is moot. 5e does this with the Gritty Rest varient in the DMG, though that has issues with changing the expected number of short rests per long rest. Adventures in Middle Earth (a d20) does this by not allowing a long rest at all during the journey phase, with a few notable exceptions (a class feature, or finding a sanctuary like Elron's).

Recharge requires pushing on: This is a variant of above, where the characters can trigger feature and spell recovery, but it involved getting through enough encounters. 13th Age (a d20) does this, with at-wills, encounters, and "dailies" that come back at a full heal up - which only happens after four encounters. (13th Age does have a "players trigger it sooner", but it's in exchange for some campaign loss for the extra time spent.) This decouples sleeping from recharging, but it does work quite well.

 

[Minigiant]

My friend and I use to run a special homebrew heartbreaker game with 3 types of rests based on 4e..

The key to avioding 5MWD there was that every class had features that recharge with every of rest. And why not the same in power or number, they were equally impactful. We did this using the 4r Barbarian as the example.

"Everyone can power nova" Problem solved.

 

[Clint_L]

We’ve gone to milestone leveling, so maybe milestone resets: “You’ll get a reset when you do X.”

I've not heard that suggestion before. It's clever.

 

[Greg Benage]

I've not heard that suggestion before. It's clever.

It can be extremely "dissociated." It's a pure game mechanic that's often not going to map onto anything "in the fiction," which will drive some players nuts. It would drive me nuts in a lot of games. I used it in a very episodic Conan-style (heroic) S&S game where the adventures were structured like S&S stories. The rule was "short rests after Act I and Act II, long rest after each episode's conclusion." Worked a charm, whether the story spanned one hour or ten years. I think it would be much harder to implement in, say, a sandbox campaign, at least for certain players (including me). But I'd love to see people take a swing at it.

 

[Horwath]

1. As mentioned, make short rest really short.

2. Have all spellcasters be based on long rest

3. Have all spellcasters have wizards arcane recovery, call it spell recovery. halfcasters get 1/4th of their level(round up) in spell slots recovered. No limit of those per long rest.

4. Short rest heals you to 50% of max HPs. Then you can spend HDs to heal more if you still have them. Regain all HD on long rest.

5. Short rest removes one exhaustion level.

6. Have all classes gain some long rest abilities that are usable several times per long rest that can get only one recharge on short rest. Or everything that can be used prof bonus per day, you regain one usage per short rest.

7. Just to make long rest little more risky with random encounters and time pressure, make it 12hrs long with minimum of 8hrs of sleeping. Elves can do it in 8hrs total(4+4).


This now makes long rest a 100% recharge and short rest will probably be to 30-70% of max resources, depending how beat up or spent you started the short rest.

 

[dave2008]

So the 5 minute work day, where you fight one battle and go back to rest, has been complained about for many editions. Especially true for casters.

What are some ways you have seen this be fixed? What are some ideas you've tried and didn't work out so well? What are some new ways that this could be worked on?

I let PCs spend hit dice to recharge long rest abilities on a short rest. So a fighter can spend HD to recharge "Action Surge" and a wizard can spend HD to recharge a spell slot.

However, we don't really have an issue with the 5MWD and these options aren't used much.

 

[John R Davis]

We play
In 5th. Five minute short rest; max prof per day.
Works very well and means one hour long spells stay useful after a fight.

(In 1st AD&D you get 1st-2nd level spells back in about 5 hours ).

 

[dave2008]

The existence of short rest classes causes 5mwd issues. we don't have playtest versions for any of the short rest classes yet to guess how they will change

Couldn't you equally say the existence of long rest classes causes 5MWD issues? The reality is that the non-alignment of short and long rest classes is the issue. All one or the other is fine, but when you put them together there are (n theory) issues.