Xeviat
Hero
Hi everyone. I'm having difficulty with pacing my games and creating sufficient challenge for my players. Rarely do I hit the "adventuring day" target. In recent sessions, we had one day have to get called short because the Cleric ran out of spells and everyone else got knocked to zero in what was supposed to be the second to last encounter. In another day, the party handled what was supposed to be 3 or 4 encounters all at once in one giant melee.
For a while, I've been considering how to convert the non-Warlock spellcasters over to a short rest recovery system so every class would largely recover on a short rest. This thread isn't to discuss how to do that; this thread is to discuss the pros and cons of doing that vs option two.
Option two would be to convert all classes to long rest. Short rest recovery abilities would get their frequency increased by 3 times. The Warlock would get converted to spell slots and have their invocations reevaluated, or just get more slots and have to parse them. I strongly believe that the game will work better if everyone is running off the same recovery period.
I strongly prefer the idea of switching to short rests. I feel that it would avoid the 5 minute work day problem by severely limiting what could be done in a nova. But, it would also run the risk of making hard to deadly encounters (ones where you're likely to want to short rest after) formulaic; if you functionally have 1 spell slot of each level 1st through 5th, you'll find your most optimal choices to cycle through. This might be true of long rest spells, though; my current party's cleric is very pleased with spirit guardians and then cantrip+healing word and the occasional shield spell when I actually hit his 20 AC.
The big flaw I see in short rest recovery for all is that the act of having to ration out spell slots feels like D&D for some people. Also, short rest recovery healing in larger amounts than it is currently a available (life cleric, warlocks getting cure wounds, the healer feat) could reduce character's needs to actually long rest (but that could be discussed in a different thread).
Now, long rest recovery for all sounds like the simple solution to my problem. My concern is that it opens up the 5 minute work day problem wide and drags it to the forefront. I could counter this by explicitly telling the players that I'll veto when they can long rest or not, but I really don't like how that feels. I could make every adventure time sensitive, but that's dumb. I feel like switching back to long rests only would be abandoning 17 years of advancements in gaming.
What do you think? What are the pros and cons of all short rest or all long rest? Within all short rest, there would still be some long rest abilities, mind you, and within long rests healing surges would still be usable during a short rest. Also, this is a discussion for which option would be best, not whether or not any change is necessary.
Thanks for your thoughts.
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For a while, I've been considering how to convert the non-Warlock spellcasters over to a short rest recovery system so every class would largely recover on a short rest. This thread isn't to discuss how to do that; this thread is to discuss the pros and cons of doing that vs option two.
Option two would be to convert all classes to long rest. Short rest recovery abilities would get their frequency increased by 3 times. The Warlock would get converted to spell slots and have their invocations reevaluated, or just get more slots and have to parse them. I strongly believe that the game will work better if everyone is running off the same recovery period.
I strongly prefer the idea of switching to short rests. I feel that it would avoid the 5 minute work day problem by severely limiting what could be done in a nova. But, it would also run the risk of making hard to deadly encounters (ones where you're likely to want to short rest after) formulaic; if you functionally have 1 spell slot of each level 1st through 5th, you'll find your most optimal choices to cycle through. This might be true of long rest spells, though; my current party's cleric is very pleased with spirit guardians and then cantrip+healing word and the occasional shield spell when I actually hit his 20 AC.
The big flaw I see in short rest recovery for all is that the act of having to ration out spell slots feels like D&D for some people. Also, short rest recovery healing in larger amounts than it is currently a available (life cleric, warlocks getting cure wounds, the healer feat) could reduce character's needs to actually long rest (but that could be discussed in a different thread).
Now, long rest recovery for all sounds like the simple solution to my problem. My concern is that it opens up the 5 minute work day problem wide and drags it to the forefront. I could counter this by explicitly telling the players that I'll veto when they can long rest or not, but I really don't like how that feels. I could make every adventure time sensitive, but that's dumb. I feel like switching back to long rests only would be abandoning 17 years of advancements in gaming.
What do you think? What are the pros and cons of all short rest or all long rest? Within all short rest, there would still be some long rest abilities, mind you, and within long rests healing surges would still be usable during a short rest. Also, this is a discussion for which option would be best, not whether or not any change is necessary.
Thanks for your thoughts.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk