D&D 5E 5e Revision: Re-Balancing and Combats per Day?

[Aldarc]

It definitely wasn’t. He has actually talked about it since, basically they got him to come back in the first place by promising that the corporate culture at WotC had changed and he would actually have creative freedom again. He left when it became clear that wasn’t actually true.

Only because he wanted the creative freedom to drop kick Osgood’s table.

 

[Amros]

You've somehow gotten a very strange idea. The recharge rates for resources, and therefore the entire resource game, uses the daily XP budget as the foundation. This isn't a relation of XP to an ability, as you seems to have leapt to, but rather the point that the game expects the resources from a short rest recharge class to be in parity with a long rest recharge class when you are using the daily XP budget.

I mean, you just said resource attrition depends on the day, so....

The day is very different from the adjusted XP per day. Depending on the encounters or how you play your monsters, you could fill the XP quota without too much attrition, or spend the party halfway through. The DMG seems to reinforce this saying:

This provides a rough estimate of the adjusted XP value for encounters the party can handle before the characters will need to take a long rest.

You don't balance things on rough estimation, because XP for non-monster encounters may depend on DM, and XP for monster encounters depend on CR, which may or may not reflect exactly the danger a monster mean to the party.
This is why I say again, IMO, the focus is not in class-to-class precise balance, and the balance is in the party as a whole.
But of course, this could only be my opinion, and why we are discussing.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I would expect more and better advice on adjusting play, rather than significant rebalancing of the system itself.

I would not -- they've totally ignored this up until now, and had plenty of opportunity.

 

[Charlaquin]

Er...they actually do though?

I fear I no longer remember the specific video, but it was published IIRC a bit before Tasha's released. Jeremy Crawford explicitly discussed that there is a problem in 5e's design concerning resting and resources--or, rather, a problem between the designer-expected rate of using these things and the actual-play rate of using them. They expected players to take long days with multiple short rests...and actual play doesn't bear that out. This causes some classes, like Warlock (which was explicitly called out) to fall behind, while other classes like Wizard pull ahead, because their resources don't have to stretch as far.

While they have not explicitly drawn a connection to it (to the best of my knowledge, anyway), it is generally accepted in the community that this is why, roughly starting with Tasha's or a bit before, you see zero or almost zero uses-per-short-rest features, and a total or almost total shift to Proficiency-bonus-per-long-rest features. Because the latter is totally divorced from the party's rate of taking short rests, it provides a uniform quantity of resources regardless of whether players favor few or many rests.

Like...this really is an actual design fault actually admitted by one of the primary designers when 5e was being worked on, and arguably the lead designer still at the company after Mearls left.

I think the problem comes down to how they play tested the game. 6-8 short encounters per day did bear out in actual play when folks were running Keep on the Borderlands in the open playtest. But had they provided a playtest adventure that had been a more accurate representation of modern adventure design instead of updating a Gygax one for nostalgia points, they might have gotten better feedback on this matter.

 

[Charlaquin]

You don't balance things on rough estimation, because XP for non-monster encounters may depend on DM, and XP for monster encounters depend on CR, which may or may not reflect exactly the danger a monster mean to the party.
This is why I say again, IMO, the focus is not in class-to-class precise balance, and the balance is in the party as a whole.
But of course, this could only be my opinion, and why we are discussing.

You have to balance around some assumption, and because of all those variables you mention, a rough estimate is the best assumption they can reasonably hope to get.

 

[Ovinomancer]

The day is very different from the adjusted XP per day. Depending on the encounters or how you play your monsters, you could fill the XP quota without too much attrition, or spend the party halfway through. The DMG seems to reinforce this saying:

Um, I don't see how this works. The "Day" has a set of encounters, which have a total XP value, which you can compare to the recommended daily XP budget. If I am not presenting "days" that aren't close to the recommended budget, then the assumption that resource recharge design rests on is absent or degraded. And that's what the class design balance rests on. So, no, "day" in your use here is not at all different from the daily XP budget -- they are directly comparable.

You don't balance things on rough estimation, because XP for non-monster encounters may depend on DM, and XP for monster encounters depend on CR, which may or may not reflect exactly the danger a monster mean to the party.

There isn't precise estimation, so I don't know what you'd use other than rough estimation. Did you have a tool or metric in mind?

This is why I say again, IMO, the focus is not in class-to-class precise balance, and the balance is in the party as a whole.

Party balance is about class-to-class balance. This is like saying you don't care what weight is where in a ship going into rough seas because it's only ship balance that matters. This leads to broken ships.

But of course, this could only be my opinion, and why we are discussing.

I assume it's not someone else's opinion you're deploying.

I can point to specific things in the game that support my contention. It's not vague. There's tons of posts on these boards that directly stem from this (look to any rest change thread). If you are not using the daily XP budget that the game is balance on, then you're probably complaining in one or another thread about how rests don't work or how 5e is easy mode or how novas are breaking your game.

 

[Umbran]

I would not -- they've totally ignored this up until now, and had plenty of opportunity.

I think giving more and better advice is more likely than re-balancing the entire system, which is a major development project that would end with something more like a full-on 6e. I don't think what they've said bout the revised books indicates that level of effort or intended results.

But, you're free to disagree with all that.

 

[Blue]

"Will WotC attempt to re-balance 5e D&D with the assumption of less combat encounters per day? If so, how? "

Not as a non-variant the 2024 release. They have used "fully compatible" and many times "compatible". That change would not be compatible so it cannot be something WotC will do. This shouldn't be a real question, they have already answered it by putting forth the goal of being compatible that would not allow this.

That said, they could introduce alternate features to existing classs or a general variant rule to move per-short-rest abilities to long rest, like theyhave been with the recent subclasses. That will remove the short rest portion of the equation, and the rest could be handled with variant rest rules, including ones already published.

However, that would be a major change because of classes like the warlock and monk, making it less likely to occur.

Do not take this as me being against it. It is literally the #1 issue I have with 5e. It is just that they have already stated goals that contradict them fixing it base game in the 2024 release. Will the fix it in a future beyond that, perhaps with 6e? I fervently hope so.

 

[Amros]

I assume it's not someone else's opinion you're deploying.

Why would I do that? I meant the rest of you don't see it this way, nothing more. And discussing is not a bad thing.

I can point to specific things in the game that support my contention. It's not vague. There's tons of posts on these boards that directly stem from this (look to any rest change thread). If you are not using the daily XP budget that the game is balance on, then you're probably complaining in one or another thread about how rests don't work or how 5e is easy mode or how novas are breaking your game.

No, I don't always follow the XP budgets but what makes sense for the situation; no, I'm not complaining in any thread about rests; and no, I don't think 5e is easy mode.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Who's looking forward to the return of the five minute adventuring day?