D&D General D&D without Resource Management

[Minigiant]

Winning more often is, obviously, the type of fun the players are choosing to pursue.

Thus, if the winning strategy is to shorten the adventuring day whenever possible, that's what they both should and will do. I don't see how that short-circuits playing the game if their (IMO quite reasonable) intent is to play to win.

There's ways to prevent this but they aren't likely to be very popular:

--- Gritty: take away most if not all recharging powers-abilities-etc. other than hit points (small-fractional recharge on a long rest) and spells (full recharge daily regardless of rest schedule), and don't replace them with anything. Characters have to rely either on at-wills or on being able to get an overnight rest, the latter not always being so easy to do when in the field. Ditch short rests entirely. This would clobber the PCs' overall power level and might make a few entire classes redundant, I'm fine with both.
--- Gonzo: make everything either at-will or fully recharged every short period of time (but not "per encounter" as that's just too wishy-washy and hard to define). This removes all reasons for resting other than that the PCs realistically need to sleep sometime; otherwise, they could just keep on keepin' on. This would push the PCs' power level to the stratosphere, though, and I'm not fine with that.

The drawback with the gritty option above is that the DM really isn't encouraged by the game to use the extra time the PCs spend resting to have the enemies beef themselves up.

One thing I wondered about is the response to a combination of both Gritty and gonzo.

1. Attacks and Cantrips are at will.
2. You always have X Spellslots/rages available but if you rest you temporarily have double X Spellslots/rages
3. You always have a number of your actionsurge/ki/maneuvers/pactmagics/etc equal to your tier (1 at level 1, 2 at 5, 3 at 11, 4 at 17). Double right after a rest.
4. Monsters beef up when they rest

This way a group can push on with always on base strength vs base strength foes OR rest for double strength vs double strength foes.

Push through the dungeon and the dragon has Fire Breath (Recharge 6).

Attack, rest, attack, rest, attack with double slots and the dragon has Fire Breath (Recharge 4–6).

Attacks, flee, rest, attack, flee, rest, attack with triple slots and the dragon has Fire Breath (Always available) and lair actions.

 

[CreamCloud0]

The thing wrong with the 5MWD is that it short-circuits actually playing the game. As I said in the other thread, it is the result of failing to match tasks with outcomes. Players substitute a trivial, no-effort task for the non-trivial, effortful task because why wouldn't you? But that is, very literally, choosing not to have fun in order to win more often.

Giving players the ability to choose to have less fun in order to win more often is a mark of bad game design.

i'm reminded of playing some of my old videogames back when in-game cheatcodes were more of a thing, sure total invunerability and infinite ammo and super high jumping was fun for a bit but after a while you realised that you weren't actually playing most of the stages you were just bypassing them, the power high was entertaining in the short term but quickly dropped off, most of the fun is provided by engaging with the game on it's level and conquering the challenges.

 

[M_Natas]

So, I have some Ideas to rework encumbrance and Eating/Drinking.

One of the big problems is, that those at the moment are only negative rules. If you follow them, you get punished. They are also easily ignoreable, so players will ignore them unless the DM strictly enforces the tracking.

So in order to make them more fun to play, we need to make them more easy.

Fixing encumbrance

For encumbrance at the table with pen and paper: Slotbased systems.
Your carrying capacity is your Strengthscore in "Carrying Unit" which I call a Zent. One could use Stone or Shield or any other name ... .
A CU / Zent is 10 lbs / approximately everything between 7,5 to 15 lbs.
You get a visual inventory sheet where you have Slots for 1/10, 1/5, 1/2, 1, 2 and 5 CUs/Zent. If you want to convert an items weight to the Slots, you just divide its weight in Pounds by 10 and use the closest slot. I will make a table with all adventuring gear and weapons and armor that converts the weight to the corresponding Slots.

So at the visual inventory sheet, lower than 1 Zent Slots are grouped in a way that they always add up to 1 Zent.
So you have 10 1/10 Slots in one grouping, 5 1/5 Slots in one grouping and so on.
Here is a prototype:

So you just count the groups. To see if you are encumbered you just need to count. It is super quick and simple.
So now that the tracking part is easy, we also need to change the rules to incentivice to use encumbrance rules at all.
So, simple:

Negative Effects:
1. For every Zent above your carrying capacity your speed is decreased by 5 feet.
2. If your speed is decreased that way by half or more, you gain disadvantage on dex saving throws.

Positive effects:
1. If you only carry up to half your carrying capacity,

• your speed is increased by 5 feet.
• you gain advantage on constituion saving throws for doing forced marches.
• Your travel pace increases by 100 feet/minute / 1 Mile/hour / 6 miles/day.

2. If you are only carrying up to 1/4 or your carrying capacity,

• your speed is increased by an additional 5 feet.
• you gain advantage on constituion saving throws for doing forced marches.
• you gain advantage on dex saving throws.
• Your travel pace increases by 200 feet/minute / 2 Mile/hour / 12 miles/day.

Now interacting with the encumbrance system is easier and it can give you benefits if used. If you have other ideas that can be put to incentivice into the rules I'm all ear.

Fixing Food and Water

In order to fix the tracking of food and water, we need to also give player incentives for tracking that.
So we keep the negative effects for now and just add positive effects:

When you eat and drink double rations in a day, you gain the condition Well Fed until you finish a long rest or after 24 hours, whichever comes first.
Eating double rations in one go takes at least 30 minutes.

Condition Well Fed:

• you gain advantage on constituion saving throws based on physical activities (Forced Marches, labor for hours without rest, go without sleep, drinking alcohol ...) and to thwart the exhaustion or poison condition
• you gain 5 temporary hit points
• you gain advantage on the first Charisma saving throw after gaining this condition (because you are in a good mood)

If you have the Well Fed condition for 5 consecutive days, you gain a pound of weight.

So with the simpler encumbrance rules tracking food and water is easier, but now also if you eat enough, you can gain benefits! Now it makes sense to track Food and Water and not handwave or ignore it.

And maybe we should change the negative rules a little ... to make that easier, because counting days tonsee when you starve is not fun.

So ... when you don't eat in a day/ 24 hours/ between 2 long rests, you get the hungry condition.

Condition: Hungry

• you have disadvantage on constituion saving throws based on physical activities (Forced Marches, labor for hours without rest, go without sleep, drinking alcohol ...) and to thwart the exhaustion or poison condition
• yor hit point maximum decreases by 5 - you have disadvantage on the first Charisma saving throw after gaining this condition (because you are in abad mood)
• when you have this condition and finish a long rest without eating, you must make a constituion savingthrow against 12+ the number of days you have this condition. If you fail, you get the starving condition.
• If you eat half a ration a day, you keep the hungry condition, but you don't have to make the Con save for starving.
• if you eat a full ration you loose the hungry condition.
• if you are hungry for more then 5 days in a row, you loose 1 pound weight.

Condition Starving:

• you gain 1 level of exhaustion when you get the starving condition and one additional level for every long day you stay in the starving condition.
• Your HP maximum decreases by 10.
• you have disadvantage on all saving throws, ability checks and attack rolls, creatures have advantage for making saving throws against you and attacking you.
• when you finish a long rest/after 24 hours without eating anything, you must make a constituion saving throw against 7+ the number of days you have the starving condition. If you fail you fall unconscious.
• eating at least half a ration ends the starving condition and you gain the hungry condition.
• eating a double rations end the starving condition, but you don't gain the Well Fed condition.
• for every day you are starving you loose one pound of weight.

 

[mamba]

Only if the narrative and setup is that fights are always challenging. Most narratives will have variability in the challenge of the different fights.

that was my point, this means most fights have no stakes because there is nothing at risk, everything recharges after the encounter, and the encounter itself is not difficult enough to be a potential TPK, so it becomes meaningless

fights will vary in how tough they are generally with narratively tough opponents being tough challenges.

The default x per day limit pacing encounter design calls for and allows variability of fights within that limit. You can do that too with per encounter resource management

how, if everything recharges after the encounter, you are not being worn down…

Sure, you can keep using this encounter structure, but it makes most encounters completely inconsequential.

The weaker opponent fights are generally narratively there for the characters to either shine and look cool, or to go through fairly quickly as a minor obstacle which makes narrative sense to be there and to be overcome fairly easily. What they are not there for is a small cumulative wearing down of game day based resources

so they are just opportunities for the chars to show off, with zero stakes. Not interested, neither as a player nor DM

 

[Corinnguard]

As mentioned earlier in the thread, D&D is part-narrative and part-game mechanics. When it comes to a narrative, a lot of it is implied. The author mentions something and lets the reader subconsciously fill in the blanks. They mention a door, and the reader automatically assumes that the door that character just walked is much like a door in RL. It has a knob that you can grab and twist in a certain direction to open it. If the author mentions that the characters are resting out in the open at nighttime, the reader assumes that they are lying down on bed rolls situated around a warm, blazing fire for a couple of hours. And so forth. Implying something rather describing every single thing for the reader allows the reader to enjoy the narrative. They aren't bogged down with every single detail.

Now resource management can certainly bog down the players who are enjoying the narrative that they and the DM are creating with their 'choose your own adventure' story that involves a particular adventure within D&D such as Tyranny of Dragons. There are game mechanics to keep in mind (hit points, spell slots, carrying capacity, food and water rations, ammunition, etc.). And not every player wants to keep tabs on them all. That would take away some of the fun that we get from playing in D&D after all. But maybe it's not that we are ignoring some of the resources that D&D wants us to manage. Maybe we are just implying in some cases that the party is managing them.

So which resources does the player actually need to do something about? We need to manage hit points, they're plot armor. They ensure that the party will live to see the next encounter. Food and Water rations otoh can be implied most times. We can imagine that the characters have enough food and water, be it stuff that they bought in the last town they passed through or stuff that the Ranger or the Druid came across in the wilderness. To make things more interesting in the latter case, the DM might ask for a Survival check to see if they succeeded or failed. How often this happen varies from DM to DM. Carrying capacity can be implied. Players aren't carrying everything all of the time. How much ammunition you have can be implied. After a fight, players can scavenge around to recover the arrows and bolts they fired off, or off the bodies of the foes that were dispatched by the party. Spell slots need to be managed, like hp, they'll see you through to the next encounter.

Managing resources is pretty much RL. D&D otoh is part reality, part fantasy. It doesn't need to be micro-managed too much. It is a Goldilocks thing after all.

 

[Reynard]

Managing resources is pretty much RL. D&D otoh is part reality, part fantasy. It doesn't need to be micro-managed too much. It is a Goldilocks thing after all.

As with all things in D&D, it is preference based. Some people like that part of the game. Therefore, it makes more sense to include the rules and let people decide whether they just want to handwave it away or not.

 

[jgsugden]

Everyone hollas for "Freeeeeeeeeeeeedom!" then uses that freedom to gimmick out of tracking and into repetitive gameplay.

Not everyone. Optimizers usually try to break the system - but most players are not optimizers that do these things. If everyone you're playing with is pushing limits like that, I'd suggest looking for another group to supplement your current group to experience other styles.

 

[Minigiant]

? We need to manage hit points, they're plot armor. They ensure that the party will live to see the next encounter. Food and Water rations otoh can be implied most times. We can imagine that the characters have enough food and water, be it stuff that they bought in the last town they passed through or stuff that the Ranger or the Druid came across in the wilderness. To make things more interesting in the latter case, the DM might ask for a Survival check to see if they succeeded or failed. How often this happen varies from DM to DM.

This is a funny thing because 5e displays how there are at least 3 desired resources management for food and drinks.

1. The base 5e idea that you have to track food and drink but a Druid or Ranger can easily trivialize it with the goodberry spell or Natural Explorer
2. the people who are made about that and want everyone to track food and drink
3. the people who want everyone to be like the ranger and never track food and drink

 

[Minigiant]

Not everyone. Optimizers usually try to break the system - but most players are not optimizers that do these things. If everyone you're playing with is pushing limits like that, I'd suggest looking for another group to supplement your current group to experience other styles.

The people who have WOTC sponsored and approved D&D content don't do 6-8 encounters to drain and track resources which breaks the system.

And 3e had basic core spells that broke the resource management system.

So it isn't optimizers.

 

[nevin]

This is a funny thing because 5e displays how there are at least 3 desired resources management for food and drinks.

1. The base 5e idea that you have to track food and drink but a Druid or Ranger can easily trivialize it with the goodberry spell or Natural Explorer
2. the people who are made about that and want everyone to track food and drink
3. the people who want everyone to be like the ranger and never track food and drink

you can simplify that to this.

Different people have different levels of detail and tracking that they want. Most don't care if they have to track things but they don't get any enjoyment from it at all. Then there are those DM's especially that want you to track every copper piece and every partial biscuit. But your statement makes it look like there are 3 large groups when I think the honest truth is probably closer to 70ish percent just don't care, 25ish kind've care and 3 percentish don't know what day it is and about 2 percent want tracking systems. (obviously all percentages are opinion/'observation over the years BS)