D&D 5E Barbarian troubles

[Flamestrike]

How is the GM supposed to enforce this?

Timed adventures, environment, and 'random' encounters. For inspiration grab yourself an action movie. Any of them will do. Every single one features a race against time. Blow up the death star before it destroys the rebel base, save your daughter before the baddies realise your not on the plane, etc etc.

A central part of your job as a DM in 5E is to police the 5 minute adventuring day. The default adventuring day is [6-8 medium to hard encounters/ 2 short rests] per long rest.

Some suggestions:

• Save the princess by midnight or she gets sacrificed
• Recover the artifact for wealthy patron within 2 days or else the BBEG will use it to summon demon lord
• PC's employer offers double the salary if they recover the macguffin within 24 hours
• PC's are stranded in dungeon on island and at risk of being marooned if they cant escape within 2 days
• BBEG is smart and reinforces all rooms (or moves the princess/ macguffin elsewhere) if PC's use a hit and run strategy

Im sure you can come up with others.

You dont have to impose the [6-8 medium to hard encounters/ 2 short rests] paradigm religiously. I stick to it about 50 percent of the time (sometimes using less encounters, sometimes more, sometimes allowing more short rests, sometimes less). What imposing an adventuring day at this frequency does is it channels and conditions the players into managing resources (healing, spell slots, rages, ki points etc) around the expectation that theyre gonna get 6-8 encounters/ broken up by 2 short rests before I allow them a long rest.

Sometimes the first encounter of the adventuring day is the only one they get. But the players are so used to stretching out their resources over 6-8 encounters, they still rarely nova on them even when they do occur. The system becomes self fulfilling and self policing, and you dont have to be as heavy handed with (time limited) adventures. The PC's police themselves.

By only throwing two or three encounters per long rest at the PC's you seriously nerf Fighters, Monks, and Warlocks in comparison with Barbarians, Paladins and full casters like the Wizard.

Rage is balanced around the fact that you need to ration it out over 6-8 encounters before it refreshes. Same deal with Warlock casting v Wizard casting.

Every single time I see complaints about class imbalance, or encoutner difficulty it always gets back to the DM not enforcing the [6-8 encounter/ 2 short rest] adventuring day paradigm.

Stick to it at least half the time, and most of thes problems vanish.

 

[Valetudo]

There is so many problems going on here, but it doesn't sound like the barbarian is the actual problem. Killing your team mates off cursed sword or not means a new campaign for my players. Then I would take the barbarian and make him the villian in the new campaign. Next your player is too invested in the game and his pc. Did is a game, part of the fun is getting your ass kicked once in awhile. Too many flags have been raised, and what do the other players think?

 

[Shadowdweller00]

The survey I did a while back indicated that few GMs were averaging 6-8 combat encounters/day.
The game might be theoretically balanced for this, but it's rare in practice because it's very
hard to enforce without very heavy-handed railroading techniques. It's not something
likely to emerge naturally in play.

It's actually incredibly easy. A few other suggestions beyond what has been posted by others:

* You're free as DM to rule that certain places are just plain unsuitable for resting. For example: "This location is just too hot, cold, wet, noisy, bug-infested, or uncomfortable to rest properly". Some places might have curses that cause nightmares or other effects that make the PCs want to keep going...such as the faerzress in Out of the Abyss.

* There are a variety of opportunistic scavengers that might not choose to attack the PCs directly, but can be used to bring encounters without breaking verisimilitude. Possibly by just following the PCs around and making a lot of noise. For example: Will o'Wisps, Shriekers, circling vultures, flocks of noisy ravens, sneaky goblins, pushy panhandlers or street vendors.

* Assassins, scouts, patrols that track the PCs.

* "Encounters" don't even need to involve combat to deplete resources....depending on the resource type. (Rage, obviously, only functions during combat).

 

[CapnZapp]

The survey I did a while back indicated that few GMs were averaging 6-8 combat encounters/day.
The game might be theoretically balanced for this, but it's rare in practice because it's very
hard to enforce without very heavy-handed railroading techniques. It's not something
likely to emerge naturally in play.

This.

The reason is: the players can decide to camp for the night pretty much whenever they feel like.

Of course this isn't the reason.

The real reason is: the PCs get back their resources (hit dice, spells, abilities, etc) on a schedule that they themselves have control over.

There is only one real way to make the game average 6-8 combats per rest, and that is to divorce rest from day.

That is, you can go to sleep how much you want, you still don't get back your resources until after X encounters.



If that's heavyhanded, at least break the hard connection between rest and day, to allow one adventure to replace it with hour and another with month.

In a hectic dungeon, day can feel way too slow, leading to the "15 minute work day". If you got a long rest after one hour (and a short rest after, say, 10 minutes), you could still feel worthwhile the entire day.

On a long journey, where encounters come far and few between, day is much too fast, resulting in that the party is always at 100%. If the long rest comes only once a month, and short rests only twice a week, the adventure would have a fighting chance to reach the 6 to 8 encounters before resting trivializes the next encounter.

The important bit is that the length differs between different scenarios for the same campaign: a given character needs to experience the one hour rest in one adventure, and the monthly rest in another. Don't change the day equally for all scenarios, then you have solved nothing!

This is not a minor issue. It is the root cause for all these problems.

 

[S'mon]

Timed adventures, environment, and 'random' encounters. For inspiration grab yourself an action movie. Any of them will do. Every single one features a race against time. Blow up the death star before it destroys the rebel base, save your daughter before the baddies realise your not on the plane, etc etc.

Adventure films like Star Wars may have say three battles in a day, maybe four -
Star Wars has two firefights in the Death Star prison block, the attack of the garbage
monster, then Luke has a shoot-out with stormtroopers on the way out. Most Star Wars movie adventuring days have fewer fights. Action movies may conceivably have more than 4 fights in a day, but it's rare.

I'm starting to think this assumption of 5-6 fights/day might be a significant screw up in 5e. 3e assumed 4 fights a day and that was probably more realistic. OTOH my own reading of the 5e DMG
was that this was the number of fights that would exhaust PC resources, not a number required for balance
purposes.

 

[S'mon]

This.

The reason is: the players can decide to camp for the night pretty much whenever they feel like.

Of course this isn't the reason.

The real reason is: the PCs get back their resources (hit dice, spells, abilities, etc) on a schedule that they themselves have control over.

There is only one real way to make the game average 6-8 combats per rest, and that is to divorce rest from day.

That is, you can go to sleep how much you want, you still don't get back your resources until after X encounters.



If that's heavyhanded, at least break the hard connection between rest and day, to allow one adventure to replace it with hour and another with month.

In a hectic dungeon, day can feel way too slow, leading to the "15 minute work day". If you got a long rest after one hour (and a short rest after, say, 10 minutes), you could still feel worthwhile the entire day.

On a long journey, where encounters come far and few between, day is much too fast, resulting in that the party is always at 100%. If the long rest comes only once a month, and short rests only twice a week, the adventure would have a fighting chance to reach the 6 to 8 encounters before resting trivializes the next encounter.

The important bit is that the length differs between different scenarios for the same campaign: a given character needs to experience the one hour rest in one adventure, and the monthly rest in another. Don't change the day equally for all scenarios, then you have solved nothing!

This is not a minor issue. It is the root cause for all these problems.

IME:

With a dungeon delve, PCs go down, have a few encounters, leave & return to a safe base. They might take a short rest in the dungeon, say after 2 fights. Then they have a 3rd fight, then leave. They may occasionally encounter a wandering monster on the way back.

With a wilderness trek, PCs travel for a day then rest. Typical WoTC encounter rolls give 1 encounter a day. Even rolling 6 times/day with a 1 in 6 encounter chance you will rarely see more than 2 encounters, and that will be considered a very dangerous wilderness. If it's too dangerous for the PCs they won't go there, or will seek to join a caravan etc for protection.

Having Long Rest benefits refresh after a week rather than a day would allow for a plausible 6-8 wilderness encounters before a long rest. It will not work with dungeon crawls; the PCs will simply rest a week in home base before returning to the dungeon, just as they do in slow-healing old school games.

 

[S'mon]

Sorry for a bit of a threadjack, but I have a Barbarian in my own 5e campaign (well, one of them) and it is an issue, as is the Druid's wildshape in the other campaign. In practice I don't find there is any way to stop PCs long resting after daily resources are depleted. From the player character POV, not to do so would be suicidal.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Get some mindflayers into the picture and have them eat his brain.

 

[CapnZapp]

It will not work with dungeon crawls; the PCs will simply rest a week in home base before returning to the dungeon, just as they do in slow-healing old school games.

Then don't give them a home base.

They can retreat from the dungeon, sure.

But give them the choice between camping in the woodlands outside the dungeon, where any stay longer than one night is sure to attract dangerous wildlife and enough monsters to interfere with the dungeon delving...

...or, they could walk all the way back home. Do make sure that would be a) considered as an admittance of defeat and b) the dungeon would have had time to fully recover (replacing any slain foes with more dangerous cousins)


Of course, if you do change to old-school slow healing, you've just solved the problem another way.

Point remains: if there is one holy cow that needs to go to slaughter, it's this sentence from the PHB:

Adventurers can take short rests in the midst of an
adventuring day and a long rest to end the day.

 

[CapnZapp]

Sorry for a bit of a threadjack, but I have a Barbarian in my own 5e campaign (well, one of them) and it is an issue, as is the Druid's wildshape in the other campaign. In practice I don't find there is any way to stop PCs long resting after daily resources are depleted. From the player character POV, not to do so would be suicidal.

More generally:

What is our problem with the adventuring day?

It isn't that the characters stop adventuring when their resources are depleted.

It's that they, more often than not, stop adventuring before their resources are depleted.

Why is that a problem?

It's a problem if the game is built upon a series of encounters that individually isn't too dangerous, like 5th edition is. The excitement then comes from the uncertainty "do we have enough resources to last us thru the day?", and that even a weak encounter can become thrilling when everybody is out of "dailies" (like spells, surges and what not).

That the players can play it safe with next to no repercussions completely short-circuits this model.

Sure, you can try to build in restrictions in the adventures themselves: "the dragon will eat the princess at midnight. Go, go, go!" That makes resting have some real repercussions.

But that gets awfully old quick. What you need is a game that comes with built-in supports and limitations.

Support:
Empower each adventure author to set the resting pace best suited for that adventure. A trek across the desert: "You only get the benefits of long rests at an oasis". A brutal defense of the castle, that's just one endless combat slog: "You get the benefits of a long rest each time the church bell rings and rallies your hearts".

Restrictions:
"You cannot gain the benefits of a long rest until you have taken at least two short rests. You cannot gain the benefits of a short rest until after at least two encounters."

Instant solution. Boom. Done.