D&D 5E Aren't Short Rest classes *better* in "story-based" games rather than dungeon crawls?

[FrogReaver]

Just so you are aware, I agree with everything you say here.

But is anyone here asking for exact/precise balance? Or just something that works much better than the crappy short rest/long rest system that we have?

 

[tetrasodium]

1. Wizard is iconic.
2. Wizard is almost purely long rest so makes a better comparison for short rest vs long rest benefits.

Is your point that you think a sorlock is better than a warlock and maybe even a wizard?

My mistake on the attribution, but yes about the poor choices. There seems to be efforts to compare warlock at the absolute worst condition to a wizard with a quantum spellbook & quantum spellprep at their best to show that the real problem is that poor warlocks are deprived of vital resources too often rather than that it's too burdensome on the gm to manage them. Either way the design is a trainwreck.

fireball is "iconic" but a quantum wizard is not & comparisons should try to stick to the classes actually in o5e

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Do you really think that if it was that difficult, and if support was really needed, we would have seen an explosion of players and therefore DM like we did ? Certainly not. Once more, if you stop imposing constraints from previous editions on 5e, it's a way simpler but still really efficient game for roleplaying and storytelling.

Given the enormous and enduring popularity of 3e and its descendants (e.g. PF1e), juxtaposed against the frank and open admission from the designers that the system is really really broken to a degree that cannot be fixed in place and must be replaced, I think it is quite fair to say that whether a system is well-designed (as in, the rules avoid causing problems during use) and whether it is popular are two completely unrelated questions. (I can no longer find the blogpost where they said it, but one of the PF2e designers--IIRC Jason Bulmahn or Mark Seifter--effectively said "we had to design new rules because we couldn't fix PF1e without making it incompatible, and we couldn't put off fixing it any longer.")

You can have a really popular thing that is also really not very well-made. In fact, I would say gaming in specific has been quite prone to that. EverQuest was THE mega-popular MMO before WoW. Yet it was actively player-hostile in many ways and a number of its design decisions are baffling today (like having the possibility of completely losing all your equipment due to a random in-game event, such as an avalanche, that puts your body in an inaccessible location. My dad had to deal with that and eventually managed to persuade a GM that this was stupid and shouldn't cost him equipment he spent literal months crafting.)

 

[Asisreo]

The spells cast during downtime? Like, how many spell slots did you use during two weeks of rest where nothing happened?

Does anyone track spell slots during downtime?

Do you guys not track spell slots?

Wouldn't the wizard's and Sorcerers be very strong if they can cast their spells willy-nilly?

And by track, I don't necessarily mean going by downtime one day at a time, I just mean verifying that what they want to do is possible.

Sorta like "tracking" gold. Except it replenishes every day.

Also, stuff does happen during downtime, right? Like personal stuff where a personal rival to a character appears or the sick family member's conditions are getting worse. I can't imagine making adventuring hooks without them outside of the initial beginner adventure.

So, if I was a warlock and I said "I'm going to keep communications with the party as well as the patron everyday by casting Dream overnight then I'll constantly work on crafting a material component for Scrying so that I can monitor what my rival is doing." Would you just say no? I can't think of a reason why something like this wouldn't be powerful, impactful, and still RAW.

And by powerful, I don't mean overpowered. there's tradeoffs to this, but surely it's helpful before the adventure truly kicks off, right?

 

[FrogReaver]

IMO.

Long rests vs at will classes never really balanced very well either. Instead you needed the players as a group to to buy in to continuing on their adventure unless they have a good reason not to. The decision would look something like this - do we feel the party has enough resources (hp, spells, etc) to continue going without TPK or too serious a chance of PC death. Yes - keep pushing on. No, then fall back to a safe location and rest.

If players adopted a decision process of something like, continue on if possible. If not, then ask whether we continue on if we short rest and if so we short rest but if not we long rest. It's just getting players to buy into this decision process.

 

[Lyxen]

[Nothing of any value]

And you see (or not, unfortunately, see just after) the problem right there. I exhort you to let go of local technical solutions because they are pointless in the big picture, to try and find global opportunities for fun for all the players in all domains of the game (and not only combat balance and technical efficiency) and the only reading that you have is wanting to "calibrate" the game, again technically and for balance. You seem absolutely unable to enjoy a game which is not technically calibrated and balanced. To each his own, and I don't disparage your tastes in terms of TTRPG, the only thing I'm saying is that trying that "calibration" whether locally or globally in 5e is totally pointless, the global approach will not work because all the basis are unbalanced, which is also why doing it locally is also pointless (even if you correct one, it will not work because the other local situations and in particular the classes are not particularly balanced). You would have to redesign the system from the bottom up, which is where my advice is to turn to editions which did it way better from the ground up like 4e (it has other consequences as it's not a perfect world, there are compromises everywhere) but if it's what you are looking for, it's a way better solution, as it will simply not work in 5e.

 

[Lyxen]

But is anyone here asking for exact/precise balance? Or just something that works much better than the crappy short rest/long rest system that we have?

What some of us are saying is that it's pointless to redesign the resting system because the technical elements (To me, they are not flaws, as balance is not something that I'm expecting, sue me, I started with way older editions which were everything but balanced) that unbalance it are not in that sub-system but in all the 5e subsystems, starting with the classes. Because these are not balanced, but are still varied (which was for me one of the major flaw of 4e, the uniformity of at will/encounter/daily across classes), you will never be able to design a balanced resting system, that's all.

 

[Lyxen]

Given the enormous and enduring popularity of 3e and its descendants (e.g. PF1e)

Huh, no. The other explanation is that PF1 was only popular because 3.5 crashed down and the 4e alternative was unpalatable (for many reasons that are way beyond the scope of this thread). And this is easily proven by the rapid death of PF1 as soon as 5e came in, and the fact that PF2 never took of.

juxtaposed against the frank and open admission from the designers that the system is really really broken to a degree that cannot be fixed in place and must be replaced

Where does this come from ?

I think it is quite fair to say that whether a system is well-designed (as in, the rules avoid causing problems during use) and whether it is popular are two completely unrelated questions. (I can no longer find the blogpost where they said it, but one of the PF2e designers--IIRC Jason Bulmahn or Mark Seifter--effectively said "we had to design new rules because we couldn't fix PF1e without making it incompatible, and we couldn't put off fixing it any longer.")

Oh so you are talking about THOSE designers, those of PF ?

Anyhow, the main problem is that your definition of well-designed (as in, the rules avoid causing problems during use) is not a commonly accepted one either. For me, quality is whether it satisfies the customer, nothing more, nothing less. And in that respect, 5e has a aaayyyway higher level of quality than all previous editions including PF, as a proof it satisfies very well way more customers. Previous editions is what is referred to as gold-plating, over-design which in the end hampers customers satisfaction by being over-complicated. Android vs. Apple is a very good example of this as well.

And despite what you may be thinking, it's way more difficult to achieve something simple and extremely usable than to achieve something extremely complex. I don't know if you've tried it personally, but I've tried it in engineering for decades and only achieved it a few times.

You can have a really popular thing that is also really not very well-made. In fact, I would say gaming in specific has been quite prone to that. EverQuest was THE mega-popular MMO before WoW. Yet it was actively player-hostile in many ways and a number of its design decisions are baffling today (like having the possibility of completely losing all your equipment due to a random in-game event, such as an avalanche, that puts your body in an inaccessible location. My dad had to deal with that and eventually managed to persuade a GM that this was stupid and shouldn't cost him equipment he spent literal months crafting.)

And yet, it was extremely well made for its time, groundbreaking in some way even if it was not perfect. Nobody says 5e is perfect, but it is of way higher quality than systems like PF2 which very few people even want to read, much less play.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

And yet, it was extremely well made for its time, groundbreaking in some way even if it was not perfect. Nobody says 5e is perfect, but it is of way higher quality than systems like PF2 which very few people even want to read, much less play.

"Well made" only because there were literally no alternatives, which you had literally just dismissed as being a reason to ignore Pathfinder's popularity.

Yeah, I'm done here.

 

[Stoutstien]

Huh, no. The other explanation is that PF1 was only popular because 3.5 crashed down and the 4e alternative was unpalatable (for many reasons that are way beyond the scope of this thread). And this is easily proven by the rapid death of PF1 as soon as 5e came in, and the fact that PF2 never took of.



Where does this come from ?



Oh so you are talking about THOSE designers, those of PF ?

Anyhow, the main problem is that your definition of well-designed (as in, the rules avoid causing problems during use) is not a commonly accepted one either. For me, quality is whether it satisfies the customer, nothing more, nothing less. And in that respect, 5e has a aaayyyway higher level of quality than all previous editions including PF, as a proof it satisfies very well way more customers. Previous editions is what is referred to as gold-plating, over-design which in the end hampers customers satisfaction by being over-complicated. Android vs. Apple is a very good example of this as well.

And despite what you may be thinking, it's way more difficult to achieve something simple and extremely usable than to achieve something extremely complex. I don't know if you've tried it personally, but I've tried it in engineering for decades and only achieved it a few times.



And yet, it was extremely well made for its time, groundbreaking in some way even if it was not perfect. Nobody says 5e is perfect, but it is of way higher quality than systems like PF2 which very few people even want to read, much less play.

What are you talking about? Pathfinder 2e has a much shorter lifespan than 5e and is already wormed up to being the second most popular system used which is impressive for any system. Not to mention the majority of 5e popularity has nothing to do with the system but their ability to capitalize on multimedia and social media thanks to having the backing of a large corporation backing it. It's system is the most compatible with entertainment based on streaming or podcasting the gameplay due to its quick action resolution. That was not an unintentional in design. They saw a huge potential market and they capitalize on it.

The levels of sales for one to be considered a success isn't directly comparable to the other. Either company is going to release much hard data on their sales because they don't have to but I doubt Paizo is at any risk of going under because the one true system has been created.