Jacob Lewis
Ye Olde GM
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D&D General How would you redo 4e?
- Thread starter Atomoctba
- Start date
Ok, some examples.
Wizards get almost nothing out of a Short Rest, save for the 1/day Arcane Recovery (and possible Hit Dice spending). The Rage of Barbarians is a daily resource, so again, they get very little from a Short Rest.
Rogues have no resources to speak of, and thus, only need to rest to spend Hit Dice.
Monks are designed to need ki to do almost anything, and can easily spend 3 ki or more in a normal combat just to meet any baseline of contribution, compared to other classes.
Warlocks, if they want to do anything more than spam Eldritch Blast all day, are going to need multiple short rests to recharge their Pact Magic; many first time Warlock players seem to think that this is an advantage.
But in reality, taking an hour to rest during an adventuring day isn't always possible. You could be in a dungeon with threat of patrols, or in the wilderness with threat of wandering monsters. To set up a viable short rest takes time and energy, and when only some characters stand to get any benefit out of it, you might find some players wanting to push on rather than let the Monk recharge every other encounter or so.
I've heard people claim that Monks and Warlocks were designed with the idea of gaining 2 short rests per adventuring day; this doesn't always occur organically. Further, if the group can get three such rests, does that make such characters stronger than intended?
On this forum I've heard several DM's claim that the only way to truly balance the game is to pressure parties so that they don't take short or long rests whenever they feel like, by giving them deadlines for their adventures.
This approach would completely disrupt the viability of short rest classes.
Simply put, there is no advantage to having different characters being on different resource recovery schedules. It's far easier to plan out an adventuring day on the DM's part when they know everyone needs the same amount of downtime.
Vaalingrade
Legend
The times has come for the age of daily resources to end.
I'd prefer short rest resources for all, but I'd be ok if everyone had daily resources. This mix and match stuff has got to go, however.
Yeah, the basic problem is that if you have recharging resources that are dependent on resting and they're not all the same, different classes will have different power levels dependent on those numbers. Like daily 5e spell casters, who benefit from a single rest do better than short rest spell casters whose number of spells is balanced around multiple short rests.
Which is described in 5e's DMG as being 2 short rests typically with 6-8 combats.
The advantage is that classes feel more differentiated to some people if they use different recharge mechanics.
I don't think this outweighs the disadvantages which are numerous. Especially when the recharge is tied to in game world time. (13th Age has non-daily recharges that happen on a game balance timeline that work)
This actually seems to be the root of many problems. 5 min workday which only matters for casters. Having this split be mostly divided by caster (mostly dailies) vs. martial (mostly at will) often leads to inability to give martials cool things. etc.
If there are going to be different resource recharge mechanics for different classes I would much rather they not be divided this way. Let some martial classes be more daily based and some magic users be more at will based.
Of course I have have no issues with narrative type powers for the martials so don't have problems with limited but higher power usage on martials that some people have.
And while I do think there is some merit to different resource mechanics from a player interest / system mastery / game point of view, I don't need that to differentiate the character in world.
4e had the same resource schedule but a 4e Wizard had different fictional "permissions" than the 4e Fighter. 4e Wizard powers created walls, summons, teleported, fly, elemental blasts, invisibility, etc. Despite the 4e Fighter having a lot more impact and variety, the powers mostly actually just hit things with mundane riders -- mark, push, etc. Very different fictional positioning.
Vaalingrade
Legend
I haven't been okay with daily resources for a while, but having just recently played a Pathfinder 1e barbarian with a whopping 6 rounds of being a Barbarian per day... nah, fam.
You only had a 14-15 Con? No Traits allowed? I'm used to 1st level Barbarians having 9 rounds or more. But yes, I can see how that would happen. Tell you what though, that's still better than 1 Rage/day.
The last time I played a Barbarian in Pathfinder, the GM let me take Optimistic Gambler. That was a fun ride, lol.
I think this is tied to another issue that I think causes problems in that D&D (except for 4e) is not explicit or consistent on which elements of Class abilities are mapped directly into the World and which are just modeling in abstraction.
So vanican spellcasting is often used as a direct map onto the way magic works in the World.
Barbarian rage is abstract modeling of something in the world but the player is triggering this to represent the conditions when Rage occurs. The character just knows they get triggered and Rage.
Limited use Fighter abilities tend to act like Rage -- the player picks when the fictional positioning allows for this. While at will use stuff is often treated as something the character knows about -- trained in this specific in world technique.
I know some people want the exact opposite, but I think I prefer the flexibility of not mapping 1-1 as this allows for martial narrative control, more effects based, etc. This would also free abilities from being tied to in world recharge timelines as these abilities don't represent discrete in world things.
4e got most of the way there with this but still held on to a few vestiges of 1-1 mapping.
