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

[Garthanos]

Your changing the subject to pound the same drum. Martials have the crown in both at will and nova once you use feats &magic items. The battle master being a step up from the champion only exacerbates the problem. The numbers are averages not hypothetical peak:gutter making your "could fail in either direction rather odd

No sorry lack of equity is bad regardless ... I will complain about required day lengths because they fail the story driven game paradigm and actually if martial types are ahead what day length is assumed?.... because you know you cannot compute the casters (daily users) average values without it assumed. In effect the charts can say what you want with them till you eke out the assumptions and find out how many people actually play based on them vs how many are inclined to let the story control the action.

Two trivial obvious battlemaster maneuvers make the BM higher than the champion stats this is not the peak its just the easiest. EVERY analysis has assumptions. (and their chart goes against the grain of BM and Champion comparisons i have seen/done its a different issue but it shows a inversion of other assumptions)

 

[tetrasodium]

No sorry lack of equity is bad regardless ... I will complain about required day lengths because they fail the story driven game paradigm and actually if martial types are ahead what day length is assumed?.... because you know you cannot compute the casters (daily users) average values without it assumed. In effect the charts can say what you want with them. Two trivial obvious battlemaster maneuvers make the BM higher than the champion stats this is not the peak its just the easiest. EVERY analysis has assumptions. (and their chart goes against the grain of BM and Champion comparisons i have seen its a different issue but it shows a inversion of other assumptions)

the daily length does not matter because caster nova is at or around martial at will before magic resist energy resist come into play. If the day is short it benefits the martial who has more of their nova recovered from a short rest & has it recovered as many short rests as taken while casters generally do not get much of anything from short rests & even less from consecutive short rests. If the day is long it still benefits the martial because the caster is falling behind whenever they aren't doing nova damage that only manages to catch up to martial at will dpr rather than exceeding it to catch up to over a long period of time.

Long adventure days the martial has the crown. Short adventure day the martial has the crown, 100% hit/0% save chance against baddies & the martial has the crown. The length of the day only determines how big that crown is

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

If you want to impale three enemies by throwing one spear, then that's what epic levels are for.

If you really want normal adventurers to pick up mythical and legendary stunts, then there are ways to implement that without running into controversial "per encounter" meta-game structures. You can make it at-will but situational, like Cleave; or you can tie it into the die roll, if you're using abstract positioning.

I think we are a bit on different wavelengths on that. I mean, I get what you're saying, but I'm not talking about more pure combat options. Consider wizard spells of levels beyond 3rd (and in some cases even lower level ones). Project that kind of ability to have a concrete effect (not, 'just roleplay something') as an ability. I agree, 'skewer 3 guys with a javelin' might be an OK one, but it is a bit too much like just a better form of attack, it doesn't open up a new dimension of capability.

I'm thinking of stuff like being able to inspire a group of people to attempt a dangerous feat (IE NPCs, like an army). Or to lift some completely impossible thing, like a hill, or wrestle a storm giant, or row across an ocean in 3 days, something like that. Lower level things might include something like run 20 miles in 2 hours in armor, and then fight, make impossible athletic feats, etc. Anyway, as I've said before, @Garthanos made some pretty good lists in his posts on 4e 'martial practice' ideas.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

If you can force an enemy into position for your attempt, without giving them a choice in the matter, then that's mind control. There's a good reason why such powers were ridiculed in the last edition, and removed from this edition.

No it isn't, it simply reflects something like successfully tricking/manipulating them into doing what you want! What is 'mind control' about that? Secondly, why can't a fighter learn a martial form of 'mind control'? Go read your myths and legends my friend. You are stuck in a very narrow idea of what is thematic.

 

[Don Durito]

I think the problem with Martial Practices was that they were too specific. This has often been an issue with rules for Martial characters - things that would be really cool to do if they come up but will usually come up once a campaign.

What's needed is rules to do something more fluidly - and this is where the Fighter class has trouble - because it is defined solely by it's ability to Fight - so nothing else is intuitively clear. It should be obvious that the Barbarian could perform incredibly feats of toughness and endurance (and possibly the Ranger too - although this class also has identity issues), but it isn't all that obvious that should be part of the Fighter class.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

the daily length does not matter because caster nova is at or around martial at will before magic resist energy resist come into play. If the day is short it benefits the martial who has more of their nova recovered from a short rest & has it recovered as many short rests as taken while casters generally do not get much of anything from short rests & even less from consecutive short rests. If the day is long it still benefits the martial because the caster is falling behind whenever they aren't doing nova damage that only manages to catch up to martial at will dpr rather than exceeding it to catch up to over a long period of time.

Long adventure days the martial has the crown. Short adventure day the martial has the crown, 100% hit/0% save chance against baddies & the martial has the crown. The length of the day only determines how big that crown is

Not sure what you mean. If I'm a wizard and I have a reasonable spell selection, my nova is going to be downright gruesome. It might not do more damage, MAYBE not even as much in some cases, as a Battlemaster, but it will have all sorts of other effects and implications, often causing really serious, encounter ending, complications for the monsters. I can recall ending many encounters in a single round with my Transmuter, some were pretty hard encounters too!

Frankly, I think one of the toughest possible party builds would be a bunch of full-caster mountain dwarves. They can handle melee quite well if push comes to shove, and there's no question that casting rules.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think the problem with Martial Practices was that they were too specific. This has often been an issue with rules for Martial characters - things that would be really cool to do if they come up but will usually come up once a campaign.

What's needed is rules to do something more fluidly - and this is where the Fighter class has trouble - because it is defined solely by it's ability to Fight - so nothing else is intuitively clear. It should be obvious that the Barbarian could perform incredibly feats of toughness and endurance (and possibly the Ranger too - although this class also has identity issues), but it isn't all that obvious that should be part of the Fighter class.

The real issue with the fighter is the other classes. OD&D Fighting Man didn't have THAT issue. It represented EVERY kind of guy that raised a sword, from Conan to Vanamoinen, Siegfried, etc. If you stick with that sort of design, then its just a matter of providing the players with options that let them pick which sorts of flavor of special their guy is going to have. You don't end up with this 'rump' class that is just "whatever is left over". That or simply only have the specialists, but then you are going to pigeonhole people pretty hard. Of course Barbarian and Ranger kind of do that already, but it would be worse if their were also 'knight', 'samurai', 'cataphract', a 'mongol warrior' class, etc.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

No it isn't, it simply reflects something like successfully tricking/manipulating them into doing what you want! What is 'mind control' about that? Secondly, why can't a fighter learn a martial form of 'mind control'? Go read your myths and legends my friend. You are stuck in a very narrow idea of what is thematic.

That level of mind control, which is 100% infallible and give the victim absolutely no say in how they respond to it, is pure magic. It's not a thing that could possibly exist in real life. You might claim that it's a martial ability, because the caster learned it by studying combat tactics instead of eldritch tomes, but it's just magic by another name.

If you want to cast spells, then there's already a class for that. There's more than one class for that. Stop dragging the fighter into your shenanigans.

 

[tetrasodium]

I think we are a bit on different wavelengths on that. I mean, I get what you're saying, but I'm not talking about more pure combat options. Consider wizard spells of levels beyond 3rd (and in some cases even lower level ones). Project that kind of ability to have a concrete effect (not, 'just roleplay something') as an ability. I agree, 'skewer 3 guys with a javelin' might be an OK one, but it is a bit too much like just a better form of attack, it doesn't open up a new dimension of capability.

I'm thinking of stuff like being able to inspire a group of people to attempt a dangerous feat (IE NPCs, like an army). Or to lift some completely impossible thing, like a hill, or wrestle a storm giant, or row across an ocean in 3 days, something like that. Lower level things might include something like run 20 miles in 2 hours in armor, and then fight, make impossible athletic feats, etc. Anyway, as I've said before, @Garthanos made some pretty good lists in his posts on 4e 'martial practice' ideas.

Which spells? You aren't by chance going to suggest that casters should be balanced against the possibility of always having the perfect spell selection in every possible situation vrs martials with no feats & no magic items are you?

Not sure what you mean. If I'm a wizard and I have a reasonable spell selection, my nova is going to be downright gruesome. It might not do more damage, MAYBE not even as much in some cases, as a Battlemaster, but it will have all sorts of other effects and implications, often causing really serious, encounter ending, complications for the monsters. I can recall ending many encounters in a single round with my Transmuter, some were pretty hard encounters too!

Frankly, I think one of the toughest possible party builds would be a bunch of full-caster mountain dwarves. They can handle melee quite well if push comes to shove, and there's no question that casting rules.

that nova really is not all that gruesome, Thanks to wotc giving us a hardcover with a great published example of what would otherwise be a hypothetical whiteroom level possible but unlikely extreme of nearly every creature having energy resist energy immunes and/or magic resist where magic items rain like candy for martials & are nearly nonexistant for casters with avernus don't forget to cut both nova & at will damage in half too.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It's enough to remain consistent, while everyone else goes through their highs and lows.

I think history, at this point, indicates that this is NOT enough.

Old-school D&D was both secretly and openly biased toward fighters (loot tables were a class feature, hands-down best saving throw tables, strong domain management, etc.) to counteract the inherent power of magic--and magic was MUCH more restricted back then, with multi-round cast times, spells that simply failed if you were attacked, and spells that took days to memorize.

Peak-and-trough power can only be reasonably balanced with steady-state power if (a) the steady-state level is high enough, and (b) the peak-and-trough actually HAS to go through troughs as well as peaks. But Fighters (etc.) are consistently ghettoized, denied more than basic access to non-combat mechanics, so they simply aren't able to meet requirement (a). Further, because casters are the primary source of both indispensable healing and essential problem-solving tools, casters are the ones who set the pace of rests, meaning it is to everyone's advantage (whether caster or martial) to rest as often as possible in order to spend the most time in "peak" and the least time in "trough."

How do you propose to solve this problem that, up to now, WotC has twice tried to solve and failed--and which even 2e began to fall prey to?