D&D (2024) Class spell lists and pact magic are back!

[SkidAce]

Just like when 3.5 was released.

Fixed none of the fundamental issues with 3.0, just changed around a thousand little details for ultimately very little benefit. (Wizards were still quadratic, vanilla fighters remained a joke, prestige classes remained entirely unbalanced, creating NPCs remained a nightmare for the DM, and so on)

We will all buy it, not because it actually fixes 5.0, but because everyone will play 5.5 and because the many niggling tweaks make sure 5.0 is obsoleted in practice, just like 3.0 was.

I don't like it....but this is probably true.

 

[Dausuul]

I explained later in the thread why it's a challenging choice for a lot of tables. Certain environments, like dungeons, make it very difficult to get a short rest any time you just want one. This is a choice where some tables will have no problem with the change and others will have major problems, and from a design perspective that's not a good idea particularly when you're claiming backwards compatibility. It's a pretty major change to class design this late in the game to be making purely because people didn't like your one test Warlock change. Rules changes for "streamlined" isn't always a wise choice.

I continue to think the better choice would have been to allow Warlocks and Monks to recharge in a shorter period of time than one hour.

Agreed.

The fundamental problem with short rests isn't that players need more incentive to use them -- it's that they require a calibrated level of time pressure. Too much pressure, and you won't take a short rest because you don't have time for one. Too little pressure, and you won't take a short rest because you can take a long rest instead. Why refresh just some of your abilities when you can refresh all of them?

That's why changing player incentives won't do anything. The level of time pressure is entirely the DM's province, and the DM has enough to do without also having to fine-tune the pacing so that short rests happen. If you want short rests to become reliably available, then the time pressure window that enables them needs to get wider.

4E had it right with the five-minute short rest. The long rest was a limited strategic resource, the short rest was assumed to happen any time you weren't in combat. 5E wants them both to be limited resources, but it isn't willing to impose the tight control over pacing that would make this actually work, so the long rest ends up squeezing out the short rest unless the DM picks up the slack.

 

[CapnZapp]

Agreed.

The fundamental problem with short rests isn't that players need more incentive to use them -- it's that they require a calibrated level of time pressure. Too much pressure, and you won't take a short rest because you don't have time for one. Too little pressure, and you won't take a short rest because you can take a long rest instead. Why refresh just some of your abilities when you can refresh all of them?

This is true.

The follow-up, however...

4E had it right with the five-minute short rest.

Searching for a fixed time period is doomed to failure.

The pacing and cadence between adventures differ, so there's never One Right Number.

5 minutes or 37 minutes or 60 minutes - it's pointless to argue one number is "better" than any other.

---

The obvious solution is obvious.

Make "long rest" something the adventure (or DM) controls. What I mean by this is, the PHB specifically does not name any number at all, refusing to pick a default (like "once a day").

Instead, a frantic dungeon bash, where you clear out a goblin nest in maybe two hours tops - here maybe 1 hour is an appropriate "long rest". Whereas a long journey across a vast desert - here you can only "long rest" by a) finding an oasis, and b) staying there for a full uninterrupted week.

Each and every scenario is expected to include this information. It's okay to change it between different chapters of a longer source book. It is definitely not meant to be fixed during an entire campaign.

Then you simply use the rule "you can have up to two short rests for every long rest". A short rest can be had any time outside of direct action (outside of combat, chase scenes and such). The player simply declare they catch their breaths, and bam, short rest.

Now you finally have a solution which is guaranteed to always work, no matter what adventure you run.

 

[tetrasodium]

Agreed.

The fundamental problem with short rests isn't that players need more incentive to use them -- it's that they require a calibrated level of time pressure. Too much pressure, and you won't take a short rest because you don't have time for one. Too little pressure, and you won't take a short rest because you can take a long rest instead. Why refresh just some of your abilities when you can refresh all of them?

That's why changing player incentives won't do anything. The level of time pressure is entirely the DM's province, and the DM has enough to do without also having to fine-tune the pacing so that short rests happen. If you want short rests to become reliably available, then the time pressure window that enables them needs to get wider.

4E had it right with the five-minute short rest. The long rest was a limited strategic resource, the short rest was assumed to happen any time you weren't in combat. 5E wants them both to be limited resources, but it isn't willing to impose the tight control over pacing that would make this actually work, so the long rest ends up squeezing out the short rest unless the DM picks up the slack.

This is all true, but there is also the problem of how much some classes recover. Somewhere around level 7 to 11 monk and warlock have such an enormous boost from taking a rest that it quickly grows to where too little pressure leaves the recovery able to trivially dwarf what other classes get from a long rest but their design continues as if the tilted scales present in tier 1 are still locked in place

 

[CapnZapp]

I don't like it....but this is probably true.

The worst part for someone like me, who has been here before, is seeing all these posters not realizing they're getting played by WotC, and instead squabble over relatively minor issues.

As if they truly believe WotC's spiel, that 5.5E is intended to actually improve 5E...

5.5E is intended to sell us 5E all over again. Nothing more, nothing less.

WotC simply has zero incentive to rock the boat. 5E is a success and that cow is gonna get milked dry before we see actual meaningful change for the better.

5E was undeniably a massive improvement over 3E. But it only happened because WotC was in dire straits and got desperate. They genuinely tried to create a better game with 5E, and for the most part they succeeded.

(Let's just say they didn't do that by asking for public opinion and then immediately back-tracking everything that isn't universally liked...)

5.5 will be exactly like 5E except tweaked around juuust enough to make it unpalatable to stay with the 5E books.

To be clear, that's not my beef. My beef is that WotC once again pretends the x.5 edition is a genuine attempt at actual improvement.

 

[Mirrorrorrim]

This is true.

The follow-up, however...

Searching for a fixed time period is doomed to failure.

The pacing and cadence between adventures differ, so there's never One Right Number.

5 minutes or 37 minutes or 60 minutes - it's pointless to argue one number is "better" than any other.

---

The obvious solution is obvious.

Make "long rest" something the adventure (or DM) controls. What I mean by this is, the PHB specifically does not name any number at all, refusing to pick a default (like "once a day").

Instead, a frantic dungeon bash, where you clear out a goblin nest in maybe two hours tops - here maybe 1 hour is an appropriate "long rest". Whereas a long journey across a vast desert - here you can only "long rest" by a) finding an oasis, and b) staying there for a full uninterrupted week.

Each and every scenario is expected to include this information. It's okay to change it between different chapters of a longer source book. It is definitely not meant to be fixed during an entire campaign.

Then you simply use the rule "you can have up to two short rests for every long rest". A short rest can be had any time outside of direct action (outside of combat, chase scenes and such). The player simply declare they catch their breaths, and bam, short rest.

Now you finally have a solution which is guaranteed to always work, no matter what adventure you run.

I don't think fantasy physics should be based on the speed of story. Recovery of spell slots is magical physics. The DM should rule what the rest periods are for their game not only because every sentient entity relies on understanding their world, including recharging magics, but from a game perspective, players can't plan properly if the DM keeps changing the rules at their whim.

While crossing a desert over a week, you will need your spell slots for food and water every day, deal with exhaustion every day, all that. recharging your spells and hit points once a week doesn't work.

 

[CapnZapp]

I don't think fantasy physics should be based on the speed of story. Recovery of spell slots is magical physics. The DM should rule what the rest periods are for their game not only because every sentient entity relies on understanding their world, including recharging magics, but from a game perspective, players can't plan properly if the DM keeps changing the rules at their whim.

While crossing a desert over a week, you will need your spell slots for food and water every day, deal with exhaustion every day, all that. recharging your spells and hit points once a week doesn't work.

The DM should not change the rest period on a "whim". It should be clearly communicated ahead of each adventure.

Instead, everybody should realize the mechanics need to serve the story.

It is sheer idiocy if the game insists that the character must always be refreshed and ready with all their abilities just because 24 hours has passed. (Just like how the "15 minute adventuring day" is completely needless, just because the game absolutely insists a long rest should always be once a day)

You appear to be entrenched in the false belief that the game stops working unless you can recharge every 24 hours. Nothing could be further from the truth.

You could be allowed to rechange fully (a long rest) each and every other, and the game works fine if only there is a near-continuous stream of critters thrown against you. Same with any other time duration.

All that matters is the amount of combat encounters per long rest.

If you have seven combats over 45 minutes, and then long rest for an hour...
...or you have seven combats over 10 days, and then long rest for a week...

...is functionally identical. All that matters is the number of combats per long rest.

All "it must be exactly what I'm already used to" accomplishes, is the invalidation of stories and adventures with another cadence, another frequency of combats.

The point isn't to say that one week is better or worse than 5 minutes.

The point is that the duration should vary with the story, so the same adventurer can experience many and varied adventures over her career.

Or rather, the point is that y'all can argue until you get blue in the face whether 5 minute short rests are better or worse than 60 minute short rests - you're all missing the real solution: you are all in the right.

 

[Mirrorrorrim]

The DM should not change the rest period on a "whim". It should be clearly communicated ahead of each adventure.

Instead, everybody should realize the mechanics need to serve the story.

It is sheer idiocy if the game insists that the character must always be refreshed and ready with all their abilities just because 24 hours has passed. (Just like how the "15 minute adventuring day" is completely needless, just because the game absolutely insists a long rest should always be once a day)

You appear to be entrenched in the false belief that the game stops working unless you can recharge every 24 hours. Nothing could be further from the truth.

You could be allowed to rechange fully (a long rest) each and every other, and the game works fine if only there is a near-continuous stream of critters thrown against you. Same with any other time duration.

All that matters is the amount of combat encounters per long rest.

If you have seven combats over 45 minutes, and then long rest for an hour...
...or you have seven combats over 10 days, and then long rest for a week...

...is functionally identical. All that matters is the number of combats per long rest.

All "it must be exactly what I'm already used to" accomplishes, is the invalidation of stories and adventures with another cadence, another frequency of combats.

The point isn't to say that one week is better or worse than 5 minutes.

The point is that the duration should vary with the story, so the same adventurer can experience many and varied adventures over her career.

Or rather, the point is that y'all can argue until you get blue in the face whether 5 minute short rests are better or worse than 60 minute short rests - you're all missing the real solution: you are all in the right.

"Sheer idiocy." Nice. D&D has always recharged magic daily, or on a long rest, in some way. Sure, it has evolved over time, and other recharge mechanics have existed in the past. But it has always been a part of D&D. You want something different. Make it different for your game.

But here's the thing. I' ve played the way you are describing. I've RAN the way you are describing. I have experience. More than once, the DM (including me) ran into issues where the changing expectations caused problems.

I run an immersive sandboxy game where the PCs interact with the greater world regularly. They craft things, have businesses, interact with NPCs via Sending spells, use Teleportation Circles, travel in other ways, and the pacing of the story changes based on the players' interests. They plan days or weeks ahead of time, and they manage their resources with expectations in mind. A player's spell slots are not limited to their immediate adventure needs. Two PCs try to keep multiple slots open for Sending spells every night if they can. Their exertions and injuries matter, day to day, and it needs to make sense why they can heal up overnight or why it takes a week.

I've been in the situation where I wanted the more immediate story pace to change, and I said "Now we are going to have a downtime where a long rest takes a week" and I've been asked, what about my character's other interests during downtime? Can I not recover my spells? Does it really take a week to heal? I have plans every day for my spells and abilities. As a DM, I've made the mistake of reacting to a change in the story by changing the pace of a long rest, and I got complaints saying "If I knew I wasn't going to recover my resources normally, I never would have used them in the first place." I'm not the only DM who miscalculates the foresight needed, and would make that mistake and cause frustration.

Tables should use whatever optional rules that works for them, but the game should be designed with a core understanding and an expectation. Tables should select the resting mechanics that work for their table, but understand that the base game has to be designed around ONE of those rests, and they may need to make other changes because of it. If an ability is designed to be the appropriate level of power that requires a 1-hour short rest to recover, it is a very different thing if that power resets every 5 minutes. For just one example, Warlocks become either broken or worthless if you change the short rest definition.

 

[Dausuul]

Searching for a fixed time period is doomed to failure.

It worked just fine in 4E.

The obvious solution is obvious.

Make "long rest" something the adventure (or DM) controls. What I mean by this is, the PHB specifically does not name any number at all, refusing to pick a default (like "once a day").

Instead, a frantic dungeon bash, where you clear out a goblin nest in maybe two hours tops - here maybe 1 hour is an appropriate "long rest". Whereas a long journey across a vast desert - here you can only "long rest" by a) finding an oasis, and b) staying there for a full uninterrupted week.

Each and every scenario is expected to include this information. It's okay to change it between different chapters of a longer source book. It is definitely not meant to be fixed during an entire campaign.

Then you simply use the rule "you can have up to two short rests for every long rest". A short rest can be had any time outside of direct action (outside of combat, chase scenes and such). The player simply declare they catch their breaths, and bam, short rest.

Now you finally have a solution which is guaranteed to always work, no matter what adventure you run.

Enforcing two short rests per long rest can be done without variable-length rests (which are never going to happen in core D&D, and which I would never use for all the reasons @Mirrorrorrim lays out). I've been doing it for years: You leave long rests at 8 hours, set the short rest duration to 5 minutes (or even less), then say you can't take more than two short rests without a long rest in between.

But the only reason to bother with such a cap in the first place is that WotC messed up 4E's perfectly good short rest/long rest system by cranking up short rests to an excessive length, then balanced the game around an assumption of "two short rests per long rest" without putting anything in place to guide games toward that ratio.

 

[Baron Opal II]

There's nothing about short rest length that would impact backwards compatibility. No class, spells, or adventures rely on short rests being exactly 1 hour.

There's a consensus, I would say, that 1 hour is not the right duration.

Whether the right duration is 1 minute, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, or 30 minutes is very much disagreed on. Some people even want longer.

The issue isn't the length of the short rest, it's the number of short rests available for every long rest. Having the short rest be an hour strongly pushes the result to 2-4 short rests per adventuring day. If you have two short rests, that means the short rest classes can expend their power suite three times for each time the long rest class expends their suite. This seems roughly equivalent to me.

If a short rest was 5 minutes, you could easily have 12+ short rests during the day and negating the long rest classes. That's the reason why they were set to an hour each.

Do I have proof of this? A statement from a designer? No. But it seems obvious when analyze the rules. (I thought I did from an interview proximal to 5e's release, but I can't find that anymore.)