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

[Don Durito]

Not trying to be contrary, but I'm just not understanding how the game session time has anything to do with resource management in-game. Real world time does not (necessarily) correspond to in-game time in any set ratio. Players track their resources on their character sheets and then recharge as appropriate when a short or long rest opportunity comes along. A day in the game takes as long as it needs to take, whether the PCs engage in no combats or 10 combats. That could be 1 session or 6 sessions or there could even be several in-game days during a single session. Not sure how 6 sessions in real life being one day in-game is a strain on the game. Can you say more about that? Is there a concern that players will get upset if their PCs can't use (or at least have available) all their abilities every session? Sorry, I'm probably missing something here - it's just never been an issue at any of our tables in the last 5+ years.

The only thing I can think of is some are playing West Marches style, where it really makes sense to have the in-game action end with a long rest at the conclusion of the session as all PCs are back at "home base" so any possible combination of players and PCs can participate next session.

Because the point of resoure management is pacing.

And the most natural form of pacing is per game session.

If you have a big button that says "Be awesome", then you want to press it. If you never get to press it, it loses its lustre.

You have to balance awesomeness vs frequency. That, at the heart of it, is where the balance point really is.

 

[Charlaquin]

It is true that a boycott is a very powerful tool to force change.

But a boycott requires a large number of people--far more than the forumgoers at ENWorld--to be annoyed enough about the issues with 5E to dump the whole game. And they aren't going to, because most of them are having a fine time playing D&D and like 5E perfectly well and are looking forward to the next release. The issues that drive forumites crazy, they either don't notice or shrug and live with. You can tell because 5E continues to sell like gangbusters.

Unless you can rally such a large movement, boycotting 5E is just you personally choosing not to buy 5E material. Which may be the right choice for you, I don't know--that's your call. For me, it would be throwing out three or four babies to get rid of a few cups of bathwater.

Having lost hit points, spent spell slots, etc. carry over between game sessions is just kind of a pain. Like, it’s fine if it’s needed, but it’s not ideal. It’s also kind of a bummer, if you’re playing once a week, to only be able to use your coolest features once every 6 weeks or so.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Because the point of resoure management is pacing.

And the most natural form of pacing is per game session.

If you have a big button that says "Be awesome", then you want to press it. If you never get to press it, it loses its lustre.

You have to balance awesomeness vs frequency. That, at the heart of it, is where the balance point really is.

Agreed that pacing is quite important. To me, forcing the pace to conclude at the end of a game session feels artificial if it happens every session (in a non-West Marches game). Perhaps it depends on the length of your game sessions. With an average session at 3 to 4 hours, we often find a session ending at a cliffhanger type of scene - which I suppose is a fine use of pacing, too. Just as we run out of time, a big foe challenges the party or a mysterious house appears over the next ridge. Something to ponder for next session. We simply aren't able to tie things up neatly in a bow with a long rest at the end of each and every session. Frankly, I would not want to (or perhaps I'm not willing to?). I've played in games where a time limit in real life causes the in-game action to get neatly concluded by DM fiat. That's what I'm thinking about when I say it feels artificial. That, to me, is making the game less challenging as the players know exactly when the recharge is coming.

Having lost hit points, spent spell slots, etc. carry over between game sessions is just kind of a pain. Like, it’s fine if it’s needed, but it’s not ideal. It’s also kind of a bummer, if you’re playing once a week, to only be able to use your coolest features once every 6 weeks or so.

Not sure I follow the logic of it being a pain to carry over lost hit points and spent spell slots to the next session. That's what a character sheet is for (physical or electronic), after all. What am I missing?

I do agree that making one day in-game last 6 weeks IRL is likely way too long. I'm going to guess that a 6 session hasn't happened too often in our games, if at all, but honestly haven't been tracking it. Probably the longest in-game day at our table might last three sessions of 3 to 4 hours each. The "be awesome" button still maintains its luster at that frequency, IME.

 

[Asisreo]

If you want to convince the design team, this thread certainly isn't the angle. If I was on the design team, I wouldn't have made it halfway through page 1.

Alot of the criticism here is spurned by something WoTC has never stated anywhere and the hostility and venomous language would probably make it feel like this thread is only a venting thread.

Even if encounter design was created exactly as many here imagine it to be, we still haven't even targeted a universal problem. Has short rest design ever came up in your game by a significant amount?

Not just once or twice, but have classes that rely on short rests consistently afflicted your games?

 

[ph0rk]

Not just once or twice, but have classes that rely on short rests consistently afflicted your games?

Yes. Multiple tables, multiple games.

 

[Don Durito]

Agreed that pacing is quite important. To me, forcing the pace to conclude at the end of a game session feels artificial if it happens every session (in a non-West Marches game). Perhaps it depends on the length of your game sessions. With an average session at 3 to 4 hours, we often find a session ending at a cliffhanger type of scene - which I suppose is a fine use of pacing, too. Just as we run out of time, a big foe challenges the party or a mysterious house appears over the next ridge. Something to ponder for next session. We simply aren't able to tie things up neatly in a bow with a long rest at the end of each and every session. Frankly, I would not want to (or perhaps I'm not willing to?). I've played in games where a time limit in real life causes the in-game action to get neatly concluded by DM fiat. That's what I'm thinking about when I say it feels artificial. That, to me, is making the game less challenging as the players know exactly when the recharge is coming.

I'm not saying you should wrap everything up each session. It's impossible. If it's getting late and the PCs decide to storm an enemy stronghold then there's no way I'm resolving that before ending for the night.

But it's probably best to minimise the amount of different things that carry over.

But whatever sort of pacing mechanism is used (and there are some good reasons to use diagetic in game ones), the design needs to consider how they work across sessions, and the difficulty of tracking them.

Hit points are easy - they're just one number. Spell slots are already getting to be a pain - there always seems to be players who forgot to record exactly how many they used. (And I'm sure the design would be very different if not for legacy reasons).

Anything that is a metagame resource, such as the Lucky feat, should probably be based on game sessions.

 

[Asisreo]

Yes. Multiple tables, multiple games.

Thats helpful but a bit too vague. If you asked me how many times someone assaulted me and I said "multiple times, multiple locations," it wouldn't be an actionable answer.

Going into specific detail would definitely improve their ability to assess when it becomes a problem, rather than just knowing that it occurs.

Is it that every time a warlock player joins your game, something goes south? Do monks run out of Ki early every time?

 

[ph0rk]

Thats helpful but a bit too vague. If you asked me how many times someone assaulted me and I said "multiple times, multiple locations," it wouldn't be an actionable answer.

Going into specific detail would definitely improve their ability to assess when it becomes a problem, rather than just knowing that it occurs.

Is it that every time a warlock player joins your game, something goes south? Do monks run out of Ki early every time?

If I were talking to a representative of WotC I might be more verbose. Instead, I’m talking to someone who has actively argued that short rest/long rest balance isn’t a problem in 5e, so I don’t see the point.

People have made the case many times (some in this thread), and you aren’t interested in listening.

 

[pemerton]

The resource management challenge is what gives weight to the decisions the players make about how to tackle the adventure. They are fully in the driver’s seat, but there are natural consequences to trying to drive against the flow of traffic.

<snip>

unless their decisions surrounding resource management have consequences, they’re meaningless. The players should have to weigh the benefits and drawbacks of resting and recovering their resources or pressing on with what they have, and then live with the outcomes of whatever choices they make. If the players’ choice to rest results in an encounter being easier than anticipated, so be it. If their choice to rest results in them missing out on time-sensitive rewards, so be it. If their decision to press on results in one or more character deaths, so be it. The consequences are what make those choices more than just illusions.

There are many other ways to give weight to decisions. They should be weighty for all the reasons that exist in the real world (or analogous ones at least).

<snip>

The players choices aren't illusions. The CHARACTERS choices are certainly 'illusions', since they don't really exist... This is where most people's analysis falls down. They are determined to structure their thinking around an idea that the characters are treated as 'real' in some sense. It leads to a lot of difficult problems in play. So, resource management, IMHO, has the function of acting as one of the 'fictional positioning' constraints that are used by the game participants to decide what moves are and are not allowed and/or what their impact on the fiction is.

And I'm not advocating for the elimination of resources. I'm advocating for their use in a way that is under the control of all participants. So, if it is dramatically useful, to achieve the PLAYER's goals in terms of narrative and character development, etc. then they can, for instance "run out of torches" or "press on despite our wounds". I generally operate in the mode where the GM is framing scenes. So usually it will be the GM who is going to have the torches go out, perhaps, and 'press on' is more likely to be a player option, and it WILL be informed by what the fiction is telling them about their resources. Hit points and such are there to give them a good way to measure that stuff, but if they are really just wanting to be at full strength, for some dramatic reason, at a certain point, then that is probably a scene that should get framed into play.

I think this is not too different from how @pemerton has been doing it, though we seem to utilize slightly different techniques sometimes. Anyway, I actually like resource games, but I don't like when they are a choice of which player's character to gimp. If that is going to be the choice, then it should be a choice of the participants in the game, not dictated strictly by mechanics.

even fighters do have daily RESOURCES in the shape of HD and hit points themselves, which are most useful to fighters. It would be nothing but good for the game if they also had one or two 'big bang' powers that gave them something more on a par with what full casters can do

It's quite a while since I've played a RPG with strategic-level resource management.

In 4e (as I experienced it), them most basic site of resource management is within the encounter. This is not really about meaningful choices as to what content to encounter or rewards to earn. There is no particular need to gate future encounters behind prior successful encounters - the fiction can be what it can be without needing to be especially dependant on past resource expenditure. And "rewards" in 4e are treasure parcels per level which correlates to treasure parcels per quantum of XP. The game doesn't really envisage "missing out" on treasure or encounters in the way that (say) Against the Giants or Tomb of Horrors does.

4e also has daily resources, but these are mostly about either pacing (healing surges) - which become life-and-death only occasionally (the bigger deal normally is the encounter-level resource of activating healing) - or about "big bang" effects that get pulled out when the players really want to try hard.

Most of my play over the past few years has been with RPGs that don't involve resource management much or at all: Prince Valiant, Burning Wheel (this literally has a Resources stat, but my PC doesn't rely on buying stuff so it hasn't come into play in the games where I've been a player), Classic Traveller (for one of the PCs - the starship owner - money and its management is a big deal, but not for the rest of them), Cortex+ Heroic (plot points in this system are a resource, but comparable to 4e encounter powers and not at all like running out of torches deep in the Caves of Chaos).

This lack of resource management doesn't affect the occurrence or meaningfulness of player choices for their PCs.

 

[tetrasodium]

The maneuvers WORK, they are just all basically "do an extra 1d8 damage and..." where the ands are situational and not excessively differentiated. 99% of the time Distracting Strike is 'the right move', and now and then I have used Riposte, which is basically a 'front loader' that lets you achieve more rapid deployment of your SDs when you're going 'all out'. I think I've used Evasive Footwork once or twice to get in or out of position. Looking at the other maneuvers, I think most of them are usable, though some are pretty situational. I can definitely see building a PC around Commander's Strike, Rally, and/or Maneuvering Attack. Still, you will pretty much do the same stuff every round. I note that this is fairly true of our barbarian and paladin as well. They have a couple options most rounds, but each round is quite similar really.

It was definitely different playing a wizard! There were certainly a good number of times when "fire a cantrip" was the obvious choice, but there were always a wide variety of options, and most rounds were different. 4e fighters are a lot more like that, IME.

my experience with battlemasters is pretty similar except that the best option is almost always to choose commander's strike, point at the rogue, & say "pikachu I choose you" because the other options are really not that great, The a5e maneuvers look really impressive by xomparison.