D&D 5E Barbarian troubles

[Saeviomagy]

I personally would tie short rest recharges directly to encounters. At the most simple, say that after each encounter you can either gain a token or expend 5 tokens to get the benefit listed for a short rest (no time expenditure and no party synchronization necessary). After two short rests you can spend a token (and appropriate time) for a long rest.

 

[GameOgre]

Ok, Gameogre to the rescue!

First off, rolled stats are a bad idea. Rolled stats are a give the DM issues off the bat option. Don't use rolled stats.

Second off go reread the Barbarian, Trust me, my favorite class in the game is Barbarian but they are NOT overpowered. There are HUGE LIMITS on them. For instance Rage Ends if not taking damage or dishing it out AFTER ONE ROUND. This means that that battle with three waves of badguys with a short break between waves is a THREE RAGE fight. This is a HUGE LIMIT.

Also go back and reread the RESTING rules. You get one long rest per 24 HOURS. So no the players can't reset whenever they want. Also it's something like 6-9 encounters between long rests.

So like: Three combat encounters-short rest,three combat encounters another short rest and then two or three more encounters THEN a long rest.

So at 10th level the Barbarian can Rage for just half of those fights per day. That is half he can't rage on!

 

[CapnZapp]

Also it's something like 6-9 encounters between long rests.

That's not actually a rule. In fact, I'd call it little more than wishful thinking on the designers' part.

Many forumists will vouch for that long adventuring days happening not very often. Many DMs will tell you it's incredibly difficult to railroad the players into keep going even 6 encounters that day.

Your other advice is sound.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

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.

I will start evoking the rule that you can't have a long rest after a day's travel. So if you want to have a long rest you need to take one day off. That rule should help accumulating downtime days and will make it easier to enforce more encounters per long rest without trying too hard.
I may give one quarter hit dice back for sleeping maybe.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

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.

I don't like such rules divorced from story. See my suggestion above.
To really stop the 5 min day you need to do the following: reduce encounter difficulty in general. If every fight demands the depletion of all resources, going on would be suicide. If the encounters only deplete 20% of your resources and you gain 20% back with a short rest, 7 encounters are manageable, although the last are becoming more dangerous.
The party's own pride should have the go on after those minor scratches. Otherwise the fighter might mock the whiny wizard for wanting to rest everytime he has cast a spell.

 

[KahlessNestor]

Remember you can only benefit from a long rest once per 24 hour period. I find a lot of players don't realize that.

 

[Kithas]

Rolled stats aren't your problem, as my dm often says "I can just make it harder, I don't care how op you get," and one of our campaigns has a really high power level, some our fault mostly his but that's neither here nor there. Rolled stats don't make people overpowered, sometimes you get lucky, cool, you will pretty much always have some weaknesses. This guy is basically just a Barb with good stats, that's not nearly overpowered or game-breaking. Many people have brought up great ways to challenge him, my suggestion would be to make a good portion of the sections non-combat, sneaking, intelligence gathering, and puzzle-solving will all be well beyond the barbarians abilities and let the rest of the party shine. Speaking of the rest of your party, do they make good characters? No insult intended a lot of great players make really bad characters, try to help them optimize within their character's concept.

 

[GameOgre]

That's not actually a rule. In fact, I'd call it little more than wishful thinking on the designers' part.

Many forumists will vouch for that long adventuring days happening not very often. Many DMs will tell you it's incredibly difficult to railroad the players into keep going even 6 encounters that day.

Your other advice is sound.

I find that strange and weird. I as the DM have almost total control of when the party can get a rest in. How can it be rare that a DM doesn't?

My personal method is to use random encounters both in the wilds and in dungeons. I roll on those encounter tables(that vary wildly in CR both low and high) when people start getting bored or for instance the party wants to try and get in a long rest after only a couple of encounters.

EIGHT HOURS of encounters means the party will probably exceed the recommended encounter guidelines!

My guys know this and so.....will often not try and rest unless they are OVER the recommended guidelines.

If they go over the guidelines I tend to forget to roll and also get very lose in how long it takes to rest.

Now I know this method is just what works for me but most DM's should know what works for them right?

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

If you want to limit the PCs ability to take rests, the best way is to make adventures time-sensitive. In a lot of Adventurers League adventures, you don't have the time to escape because someone is after you, or you are after someone, or something bad is about to happen.

You can tell them "Sure, you can take a rest, but that will give K'snart the Orc time to reach the abandoned orcish temple and retrieve the ancient Axe of Waaagh."

 

[Flamestrike]

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.

They long rest on the way to Alderran.

They then get picked up by the tractor beam, take out some stormtroopers on the MF (before putting on their armor) wander down to the detention block, take out the guards, get into another fight on the way out, the trash monster then nearly kills Luke, the compactor nearly kills them all, then there is a running skirmish on the way out with Han (and Luke and Leia get into another skirmish over the chasm they swing over). A running gun battle then takes place as they escape, followed by a spaceship battle once they leave the death star.

They then get a short rest in on the way to Yavin (to spend some hit dice), before Luke has to take on the imperial fleet and blow up the death star.

Thats a pretty full on adventuring day!

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.

Thats just a different way of saying the same thing.

If you only have 2 fights per long rest, barbarians effectively have double the HP of fighters, a permament +2 to damage, and advantage on str checks (from 1st level). Raging barbarians have the edge over Fighters (as do Paladins if they are allowed to smite nova).

By forcing the barbarians and paladins to stretch those long rest resources over 6-8 encounters (and 2 short rests) the classes balance out.

Try running 6 encounters with a Warlock 9 and a Wizard 9 (no short rests). Your poor 'lock has 2 spells to last him 6 encounters (30 rounds on average). Your Wizard has 15. Now insert 2 shor rests in there, and youll see it balances out (the 'lock has 6 slots of 5th level (or 1 per encounter) to the Wizards 2 5ths, 3 4ths and 3rds, 4 2nds and 1sts. Yeah the Wizard has more spells, but the locks fewer spells come out at max level, and he has at will invocations and better at will cantrip damage to fall back on).

Not all classes are as dependent on short rests as others or as dependent on long rests as others. You give more short rests, and certain classes gain more advantage from that. You push fewer encounters on the classes and those with long rest dependent abilities (spells mainly) which are more potent than short rest powers, gain the biggest benefit.

Imagine a 6 encounter adventuring day (6 encounters between long rests). Now throw 1 short rest after every encounter. Warlocks, monks and fighters will rise to the top spamming action surge, second wind, ki, stunning fist, spells and superioirty dice like candy. Now do the same thing again with no short rests between the 6 encounters and those classes fall away and suck badly.

The sweet spot is 6-8 medium to hard encounters and around 2 short rests. I aim for 6 hard encounters myself personally, with a short rest available every 2 or so encounters.