Five-Minute Workday Article

[UngeheuerLich]

I think we are not seeing the whole here:

The day now is our encounter!Just as in 4e, you were doing encounters in waves and such to allow a bit of a breather and to make it more dynamic, that design principle is now used for the whole day.

So there are no meaningless encounters, that last for hours of out of game time.

So, the assumption is again: attrition over the course of day instead of attrition over a short amount of time. This makes the game much more flexible:

You can have a single creature killed at the morning. (only 2 rounds of fight, very easily killed, but to prevent him from running, you used a fighter´s surge)

later you encounter another group of guards. 5 rounds later they are dead (about a usual encounter of 4e) And at the end of the day, you have the big battle. Twice as hard as a usual encounter. (8 rounds)

So you have 15 rounds to survive. So a mage may spend a daily resource every 5th round, and needs to have good things to do in between.

And in 4e, I have seen quite a few 15 min workdays:

encounter 1: may not be meaningless! 5 goblins
encounter 2: another meaningless fight
encounter 3: just another meaningless fight

encounter 4 should have been the "boss" fight

6 hours out of game time, 15 minutes in the game. Nothing accomplished.

Even if the group does not rest now, it was still a 15 min workday, because the time we had to play is over.

And now the soultion: Then don´t do meaningless fights. And a skill challenge to prevent the first single creature before he runs of. Scrap the really meaningless fight.
Ok, so we are now down to 1 meaningful fight at the day.
And now it does not matter if your resources are daily or encounter. And I prefer some fights before that, that are resolved very very quickly, not a full encounter.

And if you really need just encounter powers: just allow extended rests after each encounter.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

Where's the strawman? That I have to throw a certain amount of encounters/total size of encounter budget per day? Or that I'm actually pointing out what this means in practice?

You don't have to do that. If you want a single, simple combat in a day, go ahead. Is it obvious to the players that this will be their only encounter? Then they will nova. In any edition. The careful use of resources requires that they be limited and that the future remain unpredictable.

Or, as you have already pointed out yourself, change the requirements for an extended rest. They don't know when they will next have the chance to get their resources back, so they won't burn them all.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

And DM empowerment? What they are proposing isn't DM Empowerment. It's almost the opposite. DM Fetters. "To have a good game you must work round the crud in the system." The more work the game is forcing me to do to get to a baseline decent experience, the less empowered I actually am. The more they are tying me down and not letting me get on with what I want to do. And in this case the more they are crippling my ability to run a different type of game to the one they want to lay out for me. One reason I run 4e is that I don't want All Combat All The Time to keep the casters' resources down. Or "I Win" buttons out of combat.

I don´t think it will be hard at all. You should just think about a single battle: the bos battle, and think about if the boss can be defeated, if the PC´s have at least half of their resources left, and arrive there in time (i.e. on their chosen place to fight with a little bit of preperation) and if the PC´s will lose, if the boss catches them sleeping.

So over the course of the adventure, you put enough possibilities out there, that the PC´s spend too many resources in senseless fights.
And if they go in with the mentality: go in, kill everything, they will die no matter what. Rest in an unsafe place, fight with too many resources spent.

Daily powers just make the PC´s think about different things than fighting. Because fighting is always costing you resources.

The deadlier a fighting system is, and the more resource draining, the more people think about different solutions. And that is my preference for an RPG. Just enounter resources does exact the opposite.

And your solution: A rest can only be done in a safe heaven makes a "day" even longer. And this solution is a lot more preferable to me than the opposite.

 

[erleni]

I think we are not seeing the whole here:

The day now is our encounter!Just as in 4e, you were doing encounters in waves and such to allow a bit of a breather and to make it more dynamic, that design principle is now used for the whole day.

So there are no meaningless encounters, that last for hours of out of game time.

So, the assumption is again: attrition over the course of day instead of attrition over a short amount of time. This makes the game much more flexible:

You can have a single creature killed at the morning. (only 2 rounds of fight, very easily killed, but to prevent him from running, you used a fighter´s surge)

later you encounter another group of guards. 5 rounds later they are dead (about a usual encounter of 4e) And at the end of the day, you have the big battle. Twice as hard as a usual encounter. (8 rounds)

So you have 15 rounds to survive. So a mage may spend a daily resource every 5th round, and needs to have good things to do in between.

And in 4e, I have seen quite a few 15 min workdays:

encounter 1: may not be meaningless! 5 goblins
encounter 2: another meaningless fight
encounter 3: just another meaningless fight

encounter 4 should have been the "boss" fight

6 hours out of game time, 15 minutes in the game. Nothing accomplished.

Even if the group does not rest now, it was still a 15 min workday, because the time we had to play is over.

And now the soultion: Then don´t do meaningless fights. And a skill challenge to prevent the first single creature before he runs of. Scrap the really meaningless fight.
Ok, so we are now down to 1 meaningful fight at the day.
And now it does not matter if your resources are daily or encounter. And I prefer some fights before that, that are resolved very very quickly, not a full encounter.

And if you really need just encounter powers: just allow extended rests after each encounter.

I guess you don't see the heart of the problem for us (I'm not saying that you are "wrong", only that we perceive a problem that probably isn't there at all for you).
The point is that as casters can nova and mundane cannot, all the important encounters will be dominated by casters and all the more or less irrelevant mop-up will be done by mundane. This even if the 5 (or 15) minute workday will be avoided. That is exactly my experience in all D&D editions I played (except 4th) above a certain PC level.
Last week I was talking to a friend of mine that used to play 3rd edition with us. He is still playing 3rd edition with another group in a different city and told me that, to avoid "caster domination" spoiling their fun ,they banned wizards, clerics and druids from the game and implemented Tome of Battle classes (so taking out daily-based classes for more or less encounter-based ones).
If you run a game where you have max 1-2 encounters per day, like many "exploration" games do, casters with daily powers will absolutely always dominate under DDN assumptions.

 

[erleni]

So over the course of the adventure, you put enough possibilities out there, that the PC´s spend too many resources in senseless fights.
And if they go in with the mentality: go in, kill everything, they will die no matter what. Rest in an unsafe place, fight with too many resources spent.

Why should I put in a lot of meaningless fights only to make up for the shortcomings of the system?
I prefer to run less encounters, but meaningful ones (like 4e encounters are, even if longer, as there you can have tactics and so far in DD&N you only have meaningless slaughter).

 

[Klaus]

I'm of two minds here:

On the one hand, I respect that 5e as a whole is moving back towards DM empowerment. The designers have made it clear that they are giving more direct control back to the DM, and that the system will not be as rules based as it has been in the past. In other words, there is a lot of "fuzzy" areas that will need DM action instead of direct rules.

That said, I don't know if Dnd has ever experimented with mechanics to curb the desire to rest. Not simply mechanics that reduce the problem like encounter powers....but mechanics that actually change the players incentive so that mechanically they WANT to continue adventuring instead of resting.

Now at the beginning of playtest seems an excellent time to try. Why not throw us a few ideas, let us give them a shot, see what comes of it.

There are some abilities scattered here and there in 4e that encourage soldiering on. For instance, there are feats that increase your at-will powers when you're out of dailies and encounters. Not much, and they're dependant on the players taking them, but maybe it's something deserving a look?

 

[McTreble]

Only since reading ENWorld and other forums have I even thought about the phrase the "5 minute work day". As a player or DM, we just wouldn't allow for that kind of break and rest unless you were tired enough. You don't wake up at 6 am, kill camp, walk into the nearby cave, fight a roomful of orcs, and leave to sleep. It's too bright, you're too antsy, just not tired.

How hard is that to establish (as DM) and adhere to (PC)?

If WotC wants to give us a sidebar of tips on how to eliminate the 5 min day, great. I don't want a class/ race/ feat/ equipment/ spell/ weapon overhaul that bakes in those ideas.

DM and PC trust.... solves everything.

... that, and bacon.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

It's worth considering that from what we've seen so far in DDN, Fighters and Rogues both have daily abilities that they can 'nova' with.

 

[Shadeydm]

Where's the strawman? That I have to throw a certain amount of encounters/total size of encounter budget per day? Or that I'm actually pointing out what this means in practice?

Ok start as new thread and detail the "problem" and I'll be happy to "fix" it for you

 

[erleni]

It's worth considering that from what we've seen so far in DDN, Fighters and Rogues both have daily abilities that they can 'nova' with.

Isn't the fighter "nova" ability actually coming from its theme?