D&D General The "Ease of Long Rests" as a metric for describing campaigns / DM styles?

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

You very badly missed the entire discussion.

Entirely possible!

A blatantly incorrect rules assertion of needing to reserve a 3rd level spell slot for the party to use tiny hut was stated. Tiny hut is a ritual spell... When that was pointed out it shifted to more rules hyper technicalities talk about how a ritual cast is 100 rounds as if it was some super high bar. That was when the irrelivant point you are seizing on came up in response to the fact that it's generally not that much of a stretch fan out of combat party to find somewhere they could expect to swing ten minutes uninterrupted to erect Leomunds tiny improved bunker of Force®.

That's the bit where I think you didn't catch the point of the post you were responding to. Yes, LTH is a ritual spell... the person you are responding to knows this. A ritual spell takes 10 minutes to cast, hence the LotR scene being used as an example. The person also explicitly said (I quoted the relevant bits in my last post) that situations where this 10 minute breathing space is possible often come up, even in their campaign.

See the problem now?

I have no idea what point you are attempting to make because the line you are attempting to highlight with such fervor is is not particularly relevant to that context of bad rules and bizarre scenarios when all you did was highlight that it was said.

No fervor on my part. Your response seemed unfair to the person you were responding to, so I made a comment. Nothing sinister to be read into here.

 

[tetrasodium]

Entirely possible!

This is silly

That's the bit where I think you didn't catch the point of the post you were responding to. Yes, LTH is a ritual spell... the person you are responding to knows this. A ritual spell takes 10 minutes to cast, hence the LotR scene being used as an example. The person also explicitly said (I quoted the relevant bits in my last post) that situations where this 10 minute breathing space is possible often come up, even in their campaign.

See the problem now?

Yes that's not how d&d works in actual play where players can proactively make choices to take actions that a reader or viewer could not. What you're describing is how novels movies and other forms of passively consumed fornsof entertainment work.

No fervor on my part. Your response seemed unfair to the person you were responding to, so I made a comment. Nothing sinister to be read into here.

It doesn't matter if someone knows that LTH is ritual. What matters is that a high value like 3 is supported by the completely incorrect assertion of players needing to reserve an unused level 3+ slot to cast it and an absurd gameplay scenario where an out of combat party would be unable to somehow find a way of remaining out of combat long enough to ritually cast it as if they as players with agency to take action were passengers on a railroad like viewers of LOTR.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

This is silly

Yes that's not how d&d works in actual play where players can proactively make choices to take actions that a reader or viewer could not. What you're describing is how novels movies and other forms of passively consumed fornsof entertainment work.

It doesn't matter if someone knows that LTH is ritual. What matters is that a high value like 3 is supported by the completely incorrect assertion of players needing to reserve an unused level 3+ slot to cast it and an absurd gameplay scenario where an out of combat party would be unable to somehow find a way of remaining out of combat long enough to ritually cast it as if they as players with agency to take action were passengers on a railroad like viewers of LOTR.

At this point, I'm getting the impression that you're not interested in listening to opinions other than your own. No hard feelings, but I have better things to do with my time. Good luck out there.

 

[Silam]

Whew, this thread blew up. Somehow the notifications stopped coming and I didn’t realize the page count doubled … thanks for all the interesting takes to all those who chimed in! A few in-line responses below…

why bother to play any caster except warlock this way?
that could be 15 to 1 ratio of Short vs Long rests.

I guess this is highly dependent on each individual’s frame of reference. I started playing in AD&D 2nd ed, and played it for many years, then played 3.5 for many more years. In those editions, there were no cantrips and wizards literally had nothing except a slot or two, a quarterstaff, a stinky rotten spellbook and the robes on their back. Being used to this frame of reference, 4e and 5e are a literal bonanza with their abundance of at-will abilities. There are even a large selection of ranged attack cantrips. So running out of spells does not mean the wizard needs to go out and risk their d4 HDs in melee combat!

Sorry for the boomer talk … but my point is just that: even though a round where you spend slots is usually more powerful than one where you limit yourself to cantrips, that doesn’t mean cantrips are totally weak. They even scale with levels…

I rated my campaign(s) at level 2. I regularly DM for two different groups, both of whom take Leomund's tiny hut as soon as they can. I can throw a few obstacles in their way, but messing with long rests gets a lot harder after they have that spell.

LTH can literally be a game changer though it is very conspicuous. As many have pointed out, it is quite feasible for enemies to mess with it, at least some of the time.

What should we call the different classifications of this aspect of the game?

1. ???
2. ???
3. ???
4. ???
5. @greymist's school of hard knocks.

I like what you did with healing there. You kind of smeared it out in both directions.

That’s a good question. Obviously, the 1-5 rating is entirely subjective and there’s no way to ensure that two people’s equal rating is actually equivalent.

I don’t want to retroactively tack on more details on the ratings as it seems unfair to those who already cast their votes in the absence of that.

But I think it would be interesting to conduct a 2nd vote with more precise/objective rankings in the future. I don’t know what that would look like though. Maybe the average number of encounters per LR, or the % of resources left when taking a LR, or the number of encounters endured with fully depleted resources before a LR is available? Maybe a combination of these. Suggestions welcome!

You're correct. That of course requires 11-mins to cast (or 110 rounds of the Bard/Wizard/etc-Caster taking the Magic Action on their turn). And if they've kept themselves hidden thus far or silently eliminated the threats thus far in the dungeon, they may have those 11-mins uninterrupted to ritually cast. But if Pippin twists the dwarf skeleton's hand and it wakes up the hordes of Moria, they may not be able to find another 11-mins uninterrupted to cast the hut in Balin's Tomb. And even Aragorn, Boromir, Legolas, and Gimli can hold the doors while Gandalf casts the spell, that's 110 rounds they need to keep the hordes of goblins and orcs at bay before Gandalf can finish the ritual. And even then, the orcs and goblins have drums in the deep. The party may not be able to sustain uninterrupted rest, and Gandalf need to recast the ritual every time they're woken up by the drums. And meanwhile the Balor is coming. Shadow and Flame.

But again, I don't bar the players from doing this and don't usually punish/challenge them for playing smartly. Chance is also factor, esp. with random encounter tables.

I think if you’re name dropping these guys, you’ve kind of decided that the mood of the campaign would be that there are 3 short rests for every 49 days of forced march, and that in the middle of the adventure, the wizard would persuade the rest of the party to "run, fools" and then proceed to solo the BBEG, only to show up later with a fancy prestige class and a slick new robe of the archmage

 

[el-remmen]

ritual cast is 100 rounds

In the dungeon my in-person group is currently in that’d be 10 wandering encounter checks.

And where my online game currently is that’d be 5

 

[Lanefan]

In the dungeon my in-person group is currently in that’d be 10 wandering encounter checks.

And where my online game currently is that’d be 5

I liked this post but still have to ask: 10 wandering monster checks in 10 minutes?

That's a damn busy dungeon! Busy, in fact, to the point of why would the party even think about stopping for 10 minutes there, never mnd a whole night.

 

[el-remmen]

I liked this post but still have to ask: 10 wandering monster checks in 10 minutes?

That's a damn busy dungeon! Busy, in fact, to the point of why would the party even think about stopping for 10 minutes there, never mnd a whole night.

Nope. Nope. You're right. I'm wrong. I blame a morning of shoveling snow before I had my coffee. I have no idea how I got that number. I somehow thought 100 minutes instead of 100 rounds. I guess, I have played too many different editions of D&D with different round lengths.

 

[Silam]

Nope. Nope. You're right. I'm wrong. I blame a morning of shoveling snow before I had my coffee. I have no idea how I got that number. I somehow thought 100 minutes instead of 100 rounds. I guess, I have played too many different editions of D&D with different round lengths.

What’s wrong with having a highway in the Underdark? Creatures need to get to where they’re going, no matter the depth.

 

[jayoungr]

LTH can literally be a game changer though it is very conspicuous. As many have pointed out, it is quite feasible for enemies to mess with it, at least some of the time.

Here's the thing, though. Taking LTH is my group signaling how they want to play. They want to be able to have some control over when they can get a long rest. If I mess with that too often, then it just becomes antagonistic DMing--not to mention that at a certain point it may strain credibility within the fiction (depending on the story).

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

I voted 4. I allow two ten minute short rests and an single 8 hour long rest, taken as each player wishes. In order to benefit from additional rests, you must complete downtime, which in my current game is 10 days, though it could be a season, a year, etc depending on the pacing of the campaign. During downtime, the world moves on, so monsters replenish (or level up), bad guys advance their goals, etc. Certain quests/campaign events/building projects are measured in downtimes.