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

[Chaosmancer]

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.

This can work. But it ends up making it very hard for the players unless the DM defines things ahead of time. Because for the player there is now a disconnect where sometimes they can cast their spells dozens of times a day, and sometimes only once a week.

Mechanically, it is fine, but narratively/RP wise it ends up being a difficult pill to swallow.

 

[tetrasodium]

"roughly equivalent" eventually falls down & bursts into flames.

Spoiler: For example

• L5 sorc wiz cleric or druid has 4/3/2 first second & third level slots amounting to 27 spell points worth of spell slots per long rest.
  • a L5 warlock has 2 level 3 slots amounting to 6 spell points per short rest plus AREB & the new bladelock second attack thing & various invocations.
    • ABRB is easily a leveled spell equivalent at this point & the hexblade thing is multiple fighter features but the warlock can still credibly claim "I need those short rests to keep up with them" while pointing at almost anyone at the table
• A L7 sorc wiz cleric or druid has 4/3/3/1 first through fifth level slots amounting to 33 spell points worth of slots
  • a L7 warlock has two 4th level slots amounting to 12 spell points, a short rest.
    • Same as before, a warlock can point at someone & claim they need those short rests to keep up... Except by a third rest it exceeds the raw spellpoint cost alone and the warlock still has all the warlock stuff given with the intent of bridging the gap that just reversed.
• A L11 sorc wiz cleric or druid has 4/3/3/3/2/1 first through 6th level slots totaling 73 spell points
  • The warlock has 3x fifth level pact slots worth 21 spell points per short rest plus a sixth level arcanum worth an extra 9 spellpoints totaling 30 spell points per long rest and ABRB along with the hexblade thing have once again improved. Of critical importance at this level is that it only takes about 3 short rests to meet or exceed those other casters but the warlock has trivially been able to blow all 21 spell points worth of pact slots most every rest & the other casters are still likely sitting on a bunch of low level slots that might as well not even exist to them most days.
• At level 14 the sorcerer wizard cleric & druid have each gained a single seventh level spell slot worth 10 spell points.. No other spell slots of any level are gained by those four but the warlock has also gained the same seventh level arcanum slot plus that third 5th level pact slot they got after the other 4 had slot gains frozen on lower slots so they still get 21 spell points worth of slots each short rest which they were probably able to burn through making them all count before adding warlock stuff
• At 17 ABRB once again improves alongside the hexblade stuff to give the warlock multiple fighter features with a 4th attack before the fighter even has it on top of the 4th 5th level pact slot (28 spell points worth per SR) & the level 8/level 9 arcanum
• orc wiz cleric or druid has gained a single 8th & 9th level slot with all other spells haven been frozen since level 11

Somewhere in tier2 the short rest classes like warlock should have their short rest stuff freeze like regular casters see& the warlock should start getting long rest resources. Instead warlock seems to be trying to give an equivalent to 3.5 wiz or even 3.5 sorc slot progression.

 

[Vaalingrade]

D&D has always recharged magic daily, or on a long rest, in some way.

When the first defense of something is 'tradition', I find it safe to label that thing expendable.

 

[Chaosmancer]

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.)

Excepting that, in practice, hour long short rests tend to lead to 0 to 1 short rests per adventuring day. And no matter how you cut the math, that isn't equivalent to what long rest classes can put out.

Additionally, while it is rather trivial to have an entire adventuring day go by without a single short rest... that doesn't hold true for Long Rests. In fact, almost definitionally, long rests happen once per adventuring day regardless of that "day" and what it contains. Which compounds the issue. One set of classes becomes more highly variable in their output compared to the other.

This isn't to say I don't agree that 5 minutes is a little too short, or that there shouldn't be limits on the number of short rests per "day", but I don't think that means that the hour design has held up as properly functioning either.

 

[SkidAce]

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)

Of course situations vary, but aren't we normally ready for a fresh day of work after a long (nights') sleep?

It's arbitrary to be sure, but reasonable.

 

[Baron Opal II]

This isn't to say I don't agree that 5 minutes is a little too short, or that there shouldn't be limits on the number of short rests per "day", but I don't think that means that the hour design has held up as properly functioning eieither.

Oh sure. If the plan was to use an hour to control rest access it didn't have the intended effect. The time if the rest isn't significat- it is a side effect of the goal of having 2 short rests per long. You can have a 5 minute short rest all you want as long as you only get two per day.

 

[tetrasodium]

Of course situations vary, but aren't we normally ready for a fresh day of work after a long (nights') sleep?

It's arbitrary to be sure, but reasonable.

That depends on the day of work in question, do your adventurers spend most of their time in office chairs & similar? Even soldiers in modern war zones and ER staff in major disaster zones don't really have d&d type combat & chaos filled days on loop.

 

[SkidAce]

That depends on the day of work in question, do your adventurers spend most of their time in office chairs & similar? Even soldiers in modern war zones and ER staff in major disaster zones don't really have d&d type combat & chaos filled days on loop.

I'm just saying, even with all exceptions aside, there is precedent for getting tired, resting overnight, then being ready again.

So it can suffice for some people as the "gain their powers back mechanic", for a game system, and work just fine.

 

[Maxperson]

Ah yes, the nonsense of you admitting the own flaws in your reasoning and me pointing it out. No need to look into that, or to answer what sort of data you would need, or proving your own points in any meaningful way. Just keep repeating that my arguments are worthless and I don't understand or am unwilling to engage. That's the way to prove your point.



Ok, okay, I hear you. You want me to explain how the survey works. You want me to show

1) How simple is it for the participants to tell WoTC their answers to the following questions.
a) Do you like this proposal enough to put it into the game.
b) Do you like this proposal, but would like it improved.
c) Do you want it thrown out

Now, how simple is it? As simple as clicking on the options in the survey. They even provide a comment box that is very simple to use to clarify your answers or give reasoning. That is how simple it is.

See, cause, and follow along here, if I like something, like a lot, I click this option that says "very satisfied". That communicates that I like the proposal a lot. And if I like it, but not that much, I click "satisfied". If I don't like it? If I'm looking at it and I'm like, "no, this isn't that good" then I click "disatisfied". And, and this is the tricky part, if I hate it? If I want it to burn in a fire? I click "very disatisfied". And then, I often put comments to clarify, in that convenient little comment box.

Now, how could WoTC POSSIBLY use that data? Well, see, they take my answers, and they compare them with tens of thousands of other answers. And if they get a result that is vastly in love with the idea.... they keep it and plan on putting it in the game. If they get a result that isn't that good, but it isn't a dumpster fire, then they will probably look at improving it, because more than half the people liked it, maybe liked it alot, but it just isn't where they want that number to be. And if something scored only about 50/50? They toss it.

Because, you see, they have this entire, complete, really popular game. Its kind of a big deal. And, if the worst thing they can do is fall back on their already incredibly popular and successful game... that's still good for them.

So, that's question one. I just showed you the entire process. Let's look at question two.

2) Show that they don't need the text box.

Oh, I already answered this. But, you see, when they run the answers of "Very satisfied", "Satisfied", "Dissatisfied" and "Very Dissatisfied" into their data processing program, that collates all the data, it gives them a percentage. And that percentage is how they determine how well liked the proposal was. And they could go just off that. But many people like myself give more nuanced answers in the text boxes, so since they graduated high school and realize nuance exists, they find referencing those comments to be useful at narrowing down WHY something was popular or unpopular. After all, if a Barbarian ability was popular because it didn't rely on Rage, and they change it to make it rely on Rage, that would make it less popular.

There is actually a whole science behind this sort of thing. And, I know, I know that I didn't really provide something like "well how does my individual vote move that percentage line" or "how do we know for certain that WoTC isn't lying about their data and their entire data processing center is just a gerbil in a terrarium" And the truth is, we don't know for certain. WoTC could be making decisions based on using a Ouiji board to contact the ghost of Dave Arneson and I'd have no way of knowing. But, you see, the process I've laid out is exactly what WoTC has said it is, exactly how they have reported their own data, exactly how they have claimed to use that data, and since I don't want to go to jail for breaking and entering and my spy drones can't fly across the country, I really have only two options.

I can believe them and that they know what they are doing or I can insist that I KNOW they are either lying or incompetent, and actually they aren't going to succeed at this project of theirs because I read the survey once and I can't believe people can actually understand how to fill it out.

That's a lot of words for a lot of vague guesswork about how they do things. What is the percentage number for "very satisfied?" What is the percentage for "satisfied?" And so on. It's all well and good to just make a claim of, "They run it through the ringer and come up with a mystical magical percentage," but it's actually impossible for them to tell.

There's no way that they can tell that my "very dissatisfied" means I like it 8%, but yours means that you like it 3%. There's no way for them to know that my "satisfied" was almost at the "very satisfied" level, but your "satisfied" on the same question was almost "dissatisfied." And if they are assigning arbitrary constant numbers to everyone's answers, they will never be correct with what they come up with.

 

[Maxperson]

It’s the better choice, in my opinion. A lot of players (like myself) have a very strong preference for resource management between short tests rather than between long rests. So, by the same logic that says we should have a simple fighter because some players don’t want to manage any limited resources ever, we should have a short rest caster. But obviously if only one or two classes benefit from short rests, there’s going to be tension between the party members who need them and the ones who don’t. Giving everyone at least a little stuff they can get back on a short rest helps ease that tension, without taking short rest classes away from the people who like them.

I'm confused. Isn't there already a short rest caster? The Warlock gets his slots back on short rests.