D&D General Wizard vs Fighter - the math

[Minigiant]

This doesn't make much sense to me game-wise. To balance thing it should be exactly the reverse. Areas with less encounters should have fewer rests, not more and vice versa. You have created a system that intentionally exacerbates imbalance. Which would be fine, except it is weird as you seem to be super concerned about balance...

That's because you are thinking backwards.

The idea is to match how easy it is to rest somewhere.
It's easy to rest in the city. The inn, temple, or house of healing is just feet away from the fights. After any fight the party can go to the luxury inn or the temple. So the mages have all their spells and the Fighter can Action Surge 4 times in that one fight. You forgot that the Fighter can burn 2 HD to get Action Surge.

So the Level 6 party, in the one fight the wizard can drop 3 fireballs whereas the fighter can use FOUR Action surges for EIGHT actions in 1 fight.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

That's because you are thinking backwards.

The idea is to match how easy it is to rest somewhere.
It's easy to rest in the city. The inn, temple, or house of healing is just feet away from the fights. After any fight the party can go to the luxury inn or the temple. So the mages have all their spells and the Fighter can Action Surge 4 times in that one fight. You forgot that the Fighter can burn 2 HD to get Action Surge.

So the Level 6 party, in the one fight the wizard can drop 3 fireballs whereas the fighter can use FOUR Action surges for EIGHT actions in 1 fight.

Do you think that's good game design? Because I sure don't. To me your attempts to "fix" the game seem to make it way worse.

 

[Minigiant]

Do you think that's good game design? Because I sure don't. To me your attempts to "fix" the game seem to make it way worse.

My players love it. They get to do whatever they want and I don't have to make up BS why they can't rest or their features don't recharge or why something ambushes them just to lengthen the adventuring day.

I do have a bunch of "smart alecks" and savages as players though. I live in NYC.

"Oh BIG SURPRISE! A wandering monster."
"Word on my mama. If the town healer goes missing again, I'm burning down this village."
"High key, I know this is a betrayal. But I'mma let you rock."

We spent the last session prepping for the fashion show in the Feywild. The second magical fashion show of the campaign.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

My players love it. They get to do whatever they want and I don't have to make up BS why they can't rest or their features don't recharge or why something ambushes them just to lengthen the adventuring day.

I do have a bunch of "smart alecks" and savages as players though. I live in NYC.

"Oh BIG SURPRISE! A wandering monster."
"Word on my mama. If the town healer goes missing again, I'm burning down this village."
"High key, I know this is a betrayal. But I'mma let you rock."

We spent the last session prepping for the fashion show in the Feywild. The second magical fashion show of the campaign.

This seems to be a non sequitur. I mean do you think it is good design in cities every fight to be a massive nova and casters being able to use their best utility spells with impunity? Because I don't. The game is really easy as it is, this seems to just make it even more so.

And I have not suggested making excuses to lengthen the adventuring day. Having always gritty rests is no more excuse than your varying rests, arguably less so.

 

[Minigiant]

This seems to be a non sequitur. I mean do you think it is good design in cities every fight to be a massive nova and casters being able to use their best utility spells with impunity? Because I don't. The game is really easy as it is, this seems to just make it even more so.

And I have not suggested making excuses to lengthen the adventuring day. Having always gritty rests is no more excuse than your varying rests, arguably less so.

Usually in nova days they don't have the time or forethought to use utility spells.

The city isn't separated by doors and rooms you can sit in and buff like dungeons. And people are more professional and thus aware of utility magic of their field.

The Urban, Rural, Wilds, Frontier, and Dungeons has different situations.. One rule wont fit all. That's what Ive been saying since the earlier pages. Applying rules for dungeons for city life doesn't make sense.

 

[Oofta]

Usually in nova days they don't have the time or forethought to use utility spells.

The city isn't separated by doors and rooms you can sit in and buff like dungeons. And people are more professional and thus aware of utility magic of their field.

The Urban, Rural, Wilds, Frontier, and Dungeons has different situations.. One rule wont fit all. That's what Ive been saying since the earlier pages. Applying rules for dungeons for city life doesn't make sense.

Using gritty rest rules works just fine for me. Most of my campaign is set in urban encounters, but when you have to take an entire week off to recuperate it's pretty easy to have as many encounters as I want. Meanwhile I don't really do dungeons; I do locations that make sense which can include ruins or more exotic locations. But a multi-level dungeon stocked with monsters never made much sense to me. If you don't want super-long drag out number of encounters in dungeons, it's easy to make smaller more contained dungeons. Or, in the rare case where I want to throw a ton at my PCs I just set up a sanctuary that's specially blessed that allows them to recover more quickly.

In general there more easier urban encounters and a few harder location (i.e. dungeon) encounters but it just varies based on what the story and situation demands. Much like @Crimson Longinus though, it strikes me as odd that you spend so much time complaining about how the game is unbalanced and then set up the game so that it's practically guaranteed to be unbalanced. All the while stating that the rules don't work when they work just fine for other people.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Usually in nova days they don't have the time or forethought to use utility spells.

The city isn't separated by doors and rooms you can sit in and buff like dungeons. And people are more professional and thus aware of utility magic of their field.

The Urban, Rural, Wilds, Frontier, and Dungeons has different situations.. One rule wont fit all. That's what Ive been saying since the earlier pages. Applying rules for dungeons for city life doesn't make sense.

That would make some sense, if you weren't doing it exactly backwards! Generally dungeons are high attrition zones and cities are low attrition zones. So if you want to give them different resource recovery speeds in order to maintain balance, the city needs slow recovery and the dungeon fast!

I don't know, I don't think this is going anywhere. I don't think what you're doing makes much sense to be frank, and we obviously are not going to agree about game design.

 

[Minigiant]

In general there more easier urban encounters and a few harder location (i.e. dungeon) encounters but it just varies based on what the story and situation demands. Much like @Crimson Longinus though, it strikes me as odd that you spend so much time complaining about how the game is unbalanced and then set up the game so that it's practically guaranteed to be unbalanced. All the while stating that the rules don't work when they work just fine for other people.

My rules aren't imbalanced.They work for 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 20, or 30 encounter days

That would make some sense, if you weren't doing it exactly backwards! Generally dungeons are high attrition zones and cities are low attrition zones. So if you want to give them different resource recovery speeds in order to maintain balance, the city needs slow recovery and the dungeon fast!

I don't know, I don't think this is going anywhere. I don't think what you're doing makes much sense to be frank, and we obviously are not going to agree about game design.

Agains your thinking backwards from my thought process.

You: There are usually only 1 fight per day in the city. So in order to go 7 encounters, I make the rest time 7 days.
Me: There are usually only 1 fight per day in the city. So I rebalance the classes around having 7 encounters of resources in 1 fight.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

My rules aren't imbalanced.They work for 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 20, or 30 encounter days

No they don't. At least not any better than the default rules do. Arguably worse because your adjusted rest schedule is compensates in the wrong direction.

Agains your thinking backwards from my thought process.

You: There are usually only 1 fight per day in the city. So in order to go 7 encounters, I make the rest time 7 days.
Me: There are usually only 1 fight per day in the city. So I rebalance the classes around having 7 encounters of resources in 1 fight.

And then that one city encounter needs to be some ultra super difficult one, whereas your slow rest dungeons that will have several encounters will need to have something way easier. That just seems weird and backwards. Certainly the most dangerous monsters generally are encountered in the dungeons?

 

[Oofta]

My rules aren't imbalanced.They work for 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 20, or 30 encounter days


Agains your thinking backwards from my thought process.

You: There are usually only 1 fight per day in the city. So in order to go 7 encounters, I make the rest time 7 days.

I don't start with any assumptions about how many fights there are going to be in a city. I start with the assumption that I want to get the ballpark encounter budget in between long rests. I can do that with standard rests if I want I did it for the first few years I DMed 5E. I prefer the pacing and feel that the gritty rest rules give me.

Me: There are usually only 1 fight per day in the city. So I rebalance the classes around having 7 encounters of resources in 1 fight.

So you've decided that in a city you only have 1 encounter per long rest. If your house rules work for you and your group, fantastic. Have fun! But you can't complain about how martial characters can't compete with casters that go nova on most encounters and then set up a system that encourages casters to go nova on most encounters. It's kind of like complaining about how a fire is getting out of control so you pour more gasoline on it. If you want to enable your casters to be OP, it's a fine direction to take. If you want your martial characters to feel like they contribute to the game, it's the complete opposite direction you should be taking.

If you change basic assumptions of number of encounters between long rests, whether there should have been different core assumptions or not, then you don't really have any basis for complaining about the basic assumption of the game's design as you do in thread after thread.