D&D 5E Have the designers lost interest in short rests?

[ph0rk]

The much larger point, as pertains to the topic at hand, is that the designers don't assume every single class in the book should automatically be included in every single campaign

That’s bordering on the absurd. Why pay a premium price for what is (supposedly) the market leader rpg if the players will have to DIY rebalance it for each new module or adventure? Particularly when those modules and adventures don’t say anything like “this module is not balanced for fighters, warlocks, or monks” on the damn front cover?

 

[Charlaquin]

@Don Durito :
I think you’re spot on with your observation that the conditions under which resting is possible is far more important than the amount of time it takes. Whether you have 10-minute, 1-hour, or 1 day short rests and 1 hour, 1 day, or 1 week short rests, the important thing is that HP and short rest resources are managed from encounter to encounter and hit dice and long rest resources are managed over the course of about 6 standard-difficulty encounters. The default rest times work if you regularly have several encounters a day, but if your table runs at more of a zero-to-two encounters per day pace, the “gritty realism” () rest times will probably work better for you. If your encounters tend to be spread out over a months-long or even years-long journey, AiME-style restrictions where you can rest only in a secure location might be in order.

 

[tetrasodium]

[heal kit depend]

Never saw the point of this - I guess it's meant to make some vague gesture toward realism or some such. Or maybe it's there to make a player feel their tool proficiency is useful or some such.

I've used all of them in some form or another so my frustration over having wasted so much time & effort trying to fix wat are hard to view as anything but "intentionally terrible" options might come off as some degree of exaggeration. The heal kit dependence I tried after yoinking my players from eberron into ravenloft thinking it might be a good way to use tension because the whole party of 5 only had two healers kits but between a paladin, celestial scorlock, & something else (moon druid?) in a 5 person party it somehow managed to make them less concerned about hp attrition by forcing them to realize just how much possible unused healing they were discarding before taking rests to the point where I literally saw plater A scold player B for "wasting" healer's kit charges when he was frustrated over how long the healers were taking "I cast x to heal you for y>how's your health>repeat"

 

[The Crimson Binome]

That’s bordering on the absurd. Why pay a premium price for what is (supposedly) the market leader rpg if the players will have to DIY rebalance it for each new module or adventure?

That's a very good question indeed. Of course, they already tricked you into buying it, so it's no loss for them if you find the game unplayable. Supplements are never as profitable as core rulebooks anyway.

 

[ph0rk]

That's a very good question indeed. Of course, they already tricked you into buying it, so it's no loss for them if you find the game unplayable. Supplements are never as profitable as core rulebooks anyway.

It seems like your position keeps changing, what is it?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm not actually disagreeing with you on that. Those rules are not designed very well. Still, the fact that they encourage individual DMs to change the rules for their own campaigns is something.

The much larger point, as pertains to the topic at hand, is that the designers don't assume every single class in the book should automatically be included in every single campaign. If you don't want to deal with warlocks, for any reason whatsoever, you have the fully-endorsed option to simply not include them. Likewise with feats, as a whole or individually: if you don't want them in your campaign, for whatever reason, then the solution is as simple as not including them. And yet, everyone seems insistent on ignoring the obvious solution, and making things harder on themselves for no good reason.

This I don't buy. Of course they assume, and strive for, every class working together in any combination. They just missed the boat!

 

[The Crimson Binome]

It seems like your position keeps changing, what is it?

My position is consistent. It's just multi-faceted.

D&D 5E is a poorly-designed game, which tries to hide its bad design through poorly-designed optional rules. Instead of attempting to keep everything reasonably balanced across a wide range of playstyles, they put the burden on the individual DM to try and figure out something that works for them. It's a major cop out, but they aren't exactly pretending otherwise.

 

[Don Durito]

I've used all of them in some form or another so my frustration over having wasted so much time & effort trying to fix wat are hard to view as anything but "intentionally terrible" options might come off as some degree of exaggeration. The heal kit dependence I tried after yoinking my players from eberron into ravenloft thinking it might be a good way to use tension because the whole party of 5 only had two healers kits but between a paladin, celestial scorlock, & something else (moon druid?) in a 5 person party it somehow managed to make them less concerned about hp attrition by forcing them to realize just how much possible unused healing they were discarding before taking rests to the point where I literally saw plater A scold player B for "wasting" healer's kit charges when he was frustrated over how long the healers were taking "I cast x to heal you for y>how's your health>repeat"

I use lingering injuries for when a PC goes to 0 (and there's a chance if they take more than half their hp in one hit) but tend to make the results less severe eg. broken bones rather than severed limbs. I allow lesser regeneration to recover lingering injuries which feels about right. That means that cure spells are basically slightly refluffed as being a bit more like adrenalin shots rather than actual healing.

This, plus making long rests require a bit more effort seem to do the job of making healing feel a bit less automatic and easy.

 

[Don Durito]

But one of the big problems with 5E is that the designers are completely unable to communicate with DMs on any clear and effective level.

Just to illustrate this the, "Gritty Rest Variant" is most likely doing one of two different things depending on the type of game you're runnning.

If you're doing a traditional dungeon crawl, it's ensuring that you leave the dungeon and go all the way back to town to rest up, rather then resting in the dungeon, or camping just outside.

If you're doing a more plot based episodic game it's ensuring that rest happens in downtime between adventures.

In both cases the "one week" is something of a red herring - in both cases the conditions are what really matters and need to be communicated to GMs and players in order to understand how the game will be affected. The conditions are important because they inform the consequences of resting and allow the players to make meaningful decisions - in the first the monsters have a chance to take stock, set up new guard posts in the dungeon etc - in the second the princess get rescued, the cultists complete their ritual (thinking about is this way 13th Age's "campaign loss" doesn't seem so bad - so long as the broad consequence of resting early are made clear from the outset of the "day").

If you're doing an ongoing game in which events are constantly moving and there is no clear break between adventures then the gritty rest variant cannot work as written. (This seems to me the type of game in which Long Rests are most difficult to deal with as there is no clear consistent form of pacing).

 

[EzekielRaiden]

My position is consistent. It's just multi-faceted.

D&D 5E is a poorly-designed game, which tries to hide its bad design through poorly-designed optional rules. Instead of attempting to keep everything reasonably balanced across a wide range of playstyles, they put the burden on the individual DM to try and figure out something that works for them. It's a major cop out, but they aren't exactly pretending otherwise.

Well, I'll admit it's nice to have someone be so frank about the situation, but the implied "can't nothin' be done about it" attitude isn't exactly a great follow-up.

So. Regardless of whether you think it is wise or has any given probability of success, how would you suggest fans who do care about reasonably well-designed rules act toward WotC to try to change this situation in the future? (By which I mean "do nothing becaude it won't happen" isn't really a welcome or useful response.) Because it seems as though three-ish years of public playtesting were almost entirely a waste of time at this point.

(Also, the existence of errata, Sage Advice, balance discussions, etc. are all things that suggest to me that they DO at least want players to see the game as reasonably balanced/well-designed, and their responses to things like the fan concerns about non-PHB Sorcerers getting bonus spells known seem to back that up more. Of course, the problem is that they took the wrong lessons and stuck to the flawed core rather than issuing errata to fix the flawed core, but I guess 5e is the child of 3.5e in more ways than one.)