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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 8281570" data-attributes="member: 6696971">I think its also very important to note how sensitive a game like 5e D&D (and 3.x and AD&D) is to a Long Rest recharge of limited-use abilities.  Its also important to point out what you did in 4e (that edition's play (a) wasn't even remotely as sensitive to a Long Rest Recharge and (b) there wasn't an interplay of arms race featuring Team PC in this corner and GM (as Setting extrapolater, as fun-ensurer, as lead storyteller) in the other corner.I can't think of any game on the market (perhaps there is one) where (a) the game is so sensitive to such a Recharge of limited-use abilities and (b) there isn't an encoded structure of play which dictates the recharge.  Blades, for example, is very sensitive to the PCs' Stress Pool.  However, (i) its not quite as sensitive as 5e is to Long Rest Recharge and (ii) there is a table-facing, encoded structure which dictates Stress recovery and a tightly balanced minigame around that recovery model (only during Downtime, Downtime Actions are limited, you can "overindulge" when you Indulge your Vice to recover stress - causing 1 of 4 bad outcomes which are player choice, indulging isn't binary - you aren't assured to recover x amount of Stress - and its build-relevant, the system interfaces with the Coin economy if you need to spend Coin for extra Downtime Activities because of any aspect of this Stress minigame....there are layers and layers to this...all encoded...all table facing...and the game, again, isn't quite as sensitive to Stress as 5e is to the Long Rest recharge).Now consider the implications upon play if you did the following with Stress in Blades:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">It was binary (if you get the refresh, you automatically get all your stress).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Triggering the recovery is no longer encoded, table-facing, and structured (instead its GM-facing + unstructured freeform if you trigger it or not).</li> </ul>The implications on the play loop broadly and individual decision-points of play would be massive.EDIT - Quick edit.  I wonder if a lot of 5e GMs don't feel that the game is particularly sensitive to Long Rests because they haven't spent much time at levels beyond (say) 7ish.  For me personally, the overwhelming bulk of my 5e GMing has been endgame.  Probably 75 % of the sessions I've GMed are north of level 11.  The scaling factor here (on both the x axis in breadth/array of resources and y axis in terms of potency of resources) has a a not insignificant hand to play.</blockquote>

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