Five-Minute Workday Article
Mustrum_Ridcully
Hero
No, this wasn't forgotten. It was brought several times in the past 22 pages.
It was just noted that this doesn't necessarily solve all the problems. You don'T always have a situation where the party is to expect ambushes or wandering monsters. There are also perfectly legitimate reason that have nothing to do with power-gaming or something like that for 15 minute adventuring days. For example, an adventure that mostly focuses on research and investigation that doesn't require the expenditure of spells (or hit points), until the singular point where it does - and suddenly the casters shine because they can nova.
There are campaigns where the players determine the pace and goals of the campaign. The campaign world may still be living and breathing, but there is not constantly someone around that wants to ambush the PCs every night. They may have a safe haven and reach other locations via teleport, and not every location is feasible to exist in anti-magic and anti-teleportation zones. Heck, even if they are, it may still be possible to teleport near them, get in, nova someone or something inside the zone, leave the zone, and teleport to safety. Maybe some day the enemy will return the favor and try the same trick on the PCs - but that will most likely also be another nova scenario, since the enemy will not fight a series of combats in a row with the PCs so that the non-casters have their chance to shine. He will try to surprise the PCs with a single powerful attack when they least expect it - maybe during the night, after his spies, scryings or occulst mystics tell him that the party came back from a difficult raid involving their famous nova strike ability. (Sounds like a TPK in the making)
15 minutes/spell level recovered, requiring 2 hours of meditation (not-sleep) to start to the process of recovering spells. The 2 hours upfront penalty increasing to 8 hours if a max-level slot is being refilled, or 4 hours if only a max-1 slot is being refilled. That means that at highish level, 1st and even 2nd level slots are relatively cheap to recharge, but it rapidly gets expensive from there.
Mustrum_Ridcully
Hero
This may remove the 15 minute adventure day, but it doesn't solve the balance problem _unless_ you already fixed that problem by giving everyone equally strong resources they can recover. In which case the 15 minute adventuring day is only a minor issue to me in the first place.
I could see having a system of "short rest" (minutes), "extended rest" (hours) and "downtime" (days or weeks).
Vyvyan Basterd
Adventurer
This brings a previous idea to mind. What if all of a spellcaster's spells were at-will with a minor effect? To achieve the full potential of that effect, the caster would spend multiple rounds casting. Spell levels would be used to determine the minimum level at which a certain magical effect would be achievable. Combine this with a functioning Spell Seed system and I think it could work.
Example: The Fire seed could be available as a first level spell seed. A single round of casting could launch a small fire dart. Casting for two rounds could build to a burning hands-like effect. While three rounds would get you a fireball-type effect.
tlantl
First Post
First, you got players sitting around for multiple rounds doing nothing.
Secondly, most fights in 5e will be over before a three or more round spell is completed.
Third, the poor caster is likely to get his clock cleaned way before he gets those highly charged spells off and (hopefully) they will be ruined by the attack.
The fighter or cleric or who ever get's stuck with 'protect the wizard' duty will become resentful of having to babysit the mage, causing added and unnecessary problems at the table.
This doesn't really address the out of healing issue of the short work day, or the early level limited spell issue, or the... hell I can't really think of another legitimate reason for shortened adventure days, although I can imagine dozens of not so legit reasons for this game play (non)issue.
Klaus
First Post
Like a short rest?
Like some kind of "short rest"
You're onto something.
The 4e short rest was designed around the encounter powers. But now that the classes don't all foloow the same structure, you could have a reduced number of "rests" (maybe even one), and allow different recoveries for different class structures. Something like "during a rest, the Thief can scout the surrounding area, giving the party advantage on checks to notice approaching creatures" or somesuch.
Balesir
Adventurer
I think you missed (at least) a couple:
3. Making more powerful/occasional resources take something more than a rest to recover - e.g. making 'spells'* things that must be bought, made or found for each casting, or giving 'spells' a cost beyond simple resource recovery (I have seen systems that cost 0.001 of a characteristic point per level of spell cast, for example; maybe a slightly "fussy" system, but it has its heart in the right area...)
4. Giving incentives to adventure on, and to save more powerful powers for later in the "day". For example, in 4e you might take out the +1/2/3 feats and give +1 cumulative to hit after each milestone; this would encourage keeping dailies for later, when the chance of a hit might be higher.
*: I use the word "spell", here, but it could actually apply to any higher-than-normal effectiveness power that does not recharge after a short rest.
