D&D (2024) Brainstorming 5 minute work day fixes

[tetrasodium]

The only real fix I have found for this is the DM simply forces the player(s) to keep playing the game.

There is no amount of mechanical rules that can help if the player(s) are dead set on "resting all the time". The players will just follow whatever rules they have to, and won't care about what the DM says or does. And will out right call the DMs silly bluff of "oh the world keeps turning while you rest", but the players KNOW the DM will never alter the game to be out of the players favor.

Example: The players attack a dark tower full of foes. At a point they whine and run away to rest. They rest for a time...then come back to attack the dark tower...again. The DM can bluff all day long about how the tower is now on "high alert" after being attacked. But the tower door guards will STILL be exactly TWO "appropriately fair and balanced by the rules encounter" foes. The DM will NEVER have six powerful guards and do a TPK on combat round three.

More Extreme Example: On round five of combat the players run away from a dragon to "rest". The DM blinks and then says "oh, um well, you give the dragon a free attack as you just walk away" and gets ready to do an attack. The players just shrug "whatever DM, go ahead and kill our characters and end the game and we will just leave and not come back". The DM looks on with horror about being abandoned and just says "er, um, oh, the dragon watches your characters leave."


Being the Hard Fun DM is the only way to stop the "rest all the time players". Though more then likely such players will leave that DMs game.

This so much. The system can't balance all of the Drving GM to PC incentives and5mwd checks & balances on the idea that a GM will burn down all of their prep to rebuild it on the fly while the players take a couple seconds to change a couple numbers as hp & spell slots recover. For anotrher example to yours... I've seen players allow a bbeg to escape twice in back to back adventures to take a long rest. They took the rest not because they felt pressured... they took those rests because "well actually why don't we take a long rest instead of using charges from that [literal 20ish charge wand of CLW] in case we need them some other time". Sure the bbeg got away but his role was to die or be captured to get delivered to law enforcement types not spin off into a whole new fork while bob grabs a pepsi & alice pours that bag of Doritos in a bowl.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Embrace encounter-based design.

Maybe there's just the one fight today. Maybe there's ten tomorrow. But if we abandon per-day resources, neither is a problem ever again!

 

[payn]

Embrace encounter-based design.

Maybe there's just the one fight today. Maybe there's ten tomorrow. But if we abandon per-day resources, neither is a problem ever again!

PF2 called, they have a table reserved for you.

 

[Vaalingrade]

PF2 called, they have a table reserved for you.

They use alignment. I will continue cooking this possum over this hobo trashcan fire, thank you.

 

[payn]

They use alignment. I will continue cooking this possum over this hobo trashcan fire, thank you.

Then dont use it. Its as easy to ignore alignment there as in 5E. (Im just sayin PF2 is an excellent encounters based system)

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Example: The players attack a dark tower full of foes. At a point they whine and run away to rest. They rest for a time...then come back to attack the dark tower...again. The DM can bluff all day long about how the tower is now on "high alert" after being attacked. But the tower door guards will STILL be exactly TWO "appropriately fair and balanced by the rules encounter" foes. The DM will NEVER have six powerful guards and do a TPK on combat round three.

I have been the player to call that bluff. "Look if you don't want to DM just say so" I think was my answer to the group being told if we leave the dungeon to regroup* we would come back to a higher level of threat.

Spoiler: * Context

we were 4th or 5th level and our cleric, and our bard were out of spells. None of us were over half HP, and the fighter had just had his sword destroyed by a trap with a rust monster antni built in. I was the cleric, I had been out of spells for more then an encounter and we were not even close to half way through.

More Extreme Example: On round five of combat the players run away from a dragon to "rest". The DM blinks and then says "oh, um well, you give the dragon a free attack as you just walk away" and gets ready to do an attack. The players just shrug "whatever DM, go ahead and kill our characters and end the game and we will just leave and not come back". The DM looks on with horror about being abandoned and just says "er, um, oh, the dragon watches your characters leave."

My gut says that can only come up if the party is already loosing and on the back foot and NEEDs the rest... the difference between push on and TPK or go to rest and TPK seems to be negligible.

 

[Horwath]

I do exclusively. I'm terrible at making decision, so I'd never be able to determine when the characters are "due" to level up. Combining XP from defeating enemies with XP from miscellaneous actions (opening traps, solving puzzles/riddles, overcoming environmental obstacles, etc.) is as good of a determining factor as anything I could arbitrarily contrive.

that is a good "background" method for aiming when level up should be.

but, if players are doing a good pace during sessions, 2 or 3 sessions per level seems like a good pace. Or 5/6 long rests.

 

[Blue]

having 6-8 fights per day was a bad idea from the start and it still is.

Yes... but that's what it's designed around. Which sucks, because that's not what 88% of the DM (or the published adventures) do on a regular basis.

Basically fewer harder encounters mess up the class balance between at-will and long-rest-recovery classes (& hybrid classes). I can get into a long proof, but highest-level-slots > at-will > cantrip, and you need enough rounds with castrs at cantrip level to average out all their nova, and fewer encounters don't provide enough Actions taken by the characters to do that.

But that's part of the whole issue - 5MWD is only a porblem when it's a few charactrers driving it. If everyone was "okay, we're good to go" or "time to rest" it wouldn't be a big deal.

 

[Horwath]

Yes... but that's what it's designed around. Which sucks, because that's not what 88% of the DM (or the published adventures) do on a regular basis.

Basically fewer harder encounters mess up the class balance between at-will and long-rest-recovery classes (& hybrid classes). I can get into a long proof, but highest-level-slots > at-will > cantrip, and you need enough rounds with castrs at cantrip level to average out all their nova, and fewer encounters don't provide enough Actions taken by the characters to do that.

But that's part of the whole issue - 5MWD is only a porblem when it's a few charactrers driving it. If everyone was "okay, we're good to go" or "time to rest" it wouldn't be a big deal.

yeah,

I see with many players that they want to rest after every encounter.
And players will do that unless you as a DM put random encounter after random encounter while they try to do a long rest.
And it will get really old, really fast.

If you add action that recharges 30-60% of daily resources, maybe long rest can be postponed for few encounters more.

Players will have the feeling that they got most of their power back, but not all, and will be more likely to continue with the work day.

just being able to get to 90+% of HPs after an encounter could be enough to prevent looking for instant long rest.

 

[Oofta]

The only real fix I have found for this is the DM simply forces the player(s) to keep playing the game.

There is no amount of mechanical rules that can help if the player(s) are dead set on "resting all the time". The players will just follow whatever rules they have to, and won't care about what the DM says or does. And will out right call the DMs silly bluff of "oh the world keeps turning while you rest", but the players KNOW the DM will never alter the game to be out of the players favor.

Example: The players attack a dark tower full of foes. At a point they whine and run away to rest. They rest for a time...then come back to attack the dark tower...again. The DM can bluff all day long about how the tower is now on "high alert" after being attacked. But the tower door guards will STILL be exactly TWO "appropriately fair and balanced by the rules encounter" foes. The DM will NEVER have six powerful guards and do a TPK on combat round three.

Why not? Maybe not TPK but force them to run away? Sure.

More Extreme Example: On round five of combat the players run away from a dragon to "rest". The DM blinks and then says "oh, um well, you give the dragon a free attack as you just walk away" and gets ready to do an attack. The players just shrug "whatever DM, go ahead and kill our characters and end the game and we will just leave and not come back". The DM looks on with horror about being abandoned and just says "er, um, oh, the dragon watches your characters leave."

I'll warn players that what they are doing is stupid, deadly even. It's their character though, I stopped avoiding PC death at all costs long ago.

Being the Hard Fun DM is the only way to stop the "rest all the time players". Though more then likely such players will leave that DMs game.

Maybe I fall into the category of hard fun DM by your estimation, but I have no problem retaining players and my body count doesn't come anywhere near Lanefan's.