D&D 5E (2014) Have the designers lost interest in short rests?

[Asisreo]

If the DM needs to radically reconsider the interconnectedness of the planes for their game based on which classes are at the table, that essentially makes the opposite point of the one you were arguing.

There's nothing radical about portals. This is a staple D&D encounter.

The book puts portals as the number one way for interplanar travels to even take place.

Portals are an entryway, a door. Putting a portal in your overworld at some point is the high level equivalent of putting a door in a room in your dungeon. Even if its locked, secret, hard-to-find, or barred; there's still the expectation that if you need to get in a room, the DM would have put a door there.

 

[Don Durito]

What about a long rest is different than the 5e short rest that bothers you? Both require recording spent resources across encounters I do not find them distinct... I have seen 5e spell casters not handle remembering those arbitrary spell slots and constantly asking a dm can I up cast this

The length of the recharge is different.

The longer the recharge, the more you want to hold back for the perfect moment, or the big boss fight.

If I play a Paladin every smite used is one I won't have in the final battle where being awesome matters the most. If played as designed, that's less of a concern for the Fighter.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

AD&D was my first long term D&D the followers were fluff when I played that 9th level plus fighter.

Yeah, and basically, unless you got REALLY lucky, the followers in 1e for a fighter were not a big deal. The BEST you could get was a 'captain' of about 3 levels below you, with a magic weapon, IIRC. That guy would potentially be worthy to join your party. The level 1s and troops and whatnot? I have no idea what they would do for you, other than guard your stronghold loot stash (and not very well at that). They MIGHT be useful in a wargame type campaign, but even then recruiting 2-3 hireling/hencmen wizards would probably produce a better effect on the battlefield, and still be cheaper than upkeep in the long run.

Now, HENCHMEN could be pretty useful. But the real conceit there was always that they were really 'reserve PCs' and that was how even Gygax thought of them. It was normal to promote your best henchman to full PC when 'master' died. It was pretty usual to expect to get master's stuff too! Although there were of course players who weren't that obliging.

Of course, nothing gave wizards any disadvantage with henchmen. It was all based on CHA and it was perfectly feasible to be a high CHA wizard, especially since DEX and STR were basically worthless to you (as well as WIS) and thus it was quite convenient to drop your 2nd best stat into CHA for good hiring/loyalty/obedience/morale. You wouldn't get the followers, but who cared? You could still build a tower if you wanted.

 

[cbwjm]

But what was the goal?

Is the goal to get the magic staff, specifically? If it is, its easy. They only need to find a portal or two to get to the Plane of Fire. In fact, as long as they can get to any of the elemental chaos, they can then walk to the Plane of Fire even if they start in the Plane of Water. Doesn't this require DM dependence? Well, yes. Because the DM needs to make sure they always have an avenue to accomplish their goal in a mundane fashion. Because otherwise, they're forcing the players to have a specific build or not advance at all.

What if the party has a Goolock instead of a wizard? Their plane shift relies on DM-dependence now anyways. What if the wizard never prepared Wish or Plane Shift or Gate because their build had no need for them?

All adventures need to have the answer to all their problems without needing anything in particular from a character, especially if that character plainly doesn't exist in the campaign to begin with. It makes no sense to ask a group without planar travel to go into a different plane and refuse them a way to get there.

And if they can't get the password, they can always just break in by sneaking or go in guns blazing.

Exactly! No adventure should be dependent on having access to certain spellcasters and specific spells since even if you have spellcasters, that doesn't mean you have the required spells to get to the plane of fire. What if you have a sorcerer or bard with no access to planeshift? What if your only spellcasters are the paladin and ranger? Relying on having spellcasters to cast the right spells in an adventure is poor design in my opinion. It might depend a bit on whether it is a homebrewed adventure where you know what your player's characters are capable of and even most likely to do, but otherwise you shouldn't assume spellcasters in an adventure.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

People are claiming that casters are the only one who can solve certain types of problems & complaining that comparing average at will/average nova damage between caster & fighter is unfair because it's the fighter's "perfect wet dream day." Multiple hard covers involving the very situstion of planar travel held up that don't even use it speaks to how weak the "only a caster can do x" point is. The fact that one of those hard covers is extremely hostile to casters & friendly to melee in so many ways underscores the absurdity.

Nobody is saying that there are never any ways for anyone else but a wizard to solve a problem, but spells are a HUGE help and add vastly many more options for how the party can proceed on its way vs the 'nothing at all' that the fighter has. I mean, my level 5 wizard 'mission killed' a dragon with a fairly simple spell. Admittedly, it required some really ingenious planning and the availability of a unique 'terrain' feature, but no party without that wizard could have even touched that dragon. These kinds of situations can be constructed fairly often, and that was neither the first nor last time that particular PC did something like that.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

No class is indespensible,

I'm glad we're in agreement.

How does a party with no healer keep up with the expected number of encounters per day? Hit dice are not enough, and as you well know, feats are supposed to be optional (and aren't available before 4th level in general anyway). How does the non-caster party do that? That's why I said "indispensible.

You act as though I have never played the game. Hit Dice are more than enough to get through a typical adventuring day. And even if they weren't (for the sake of argument), the encounter guidelines are just guidelines; it's not a requirement.

As for "essential problem-solving tools," how does a non-caster party deal with flying enemies? Crossing a large chasm? Sending a message any faster than on foot or (if they can spare the coin) on horseback?

They lure it elsewhere. They take a different route. The message takes slightly longer to reach its destination. There has never been a requirement that you kill a flying enemy out in the open, or that you pass over a specific chasm, or that a message get to its destination at the speed of magic, unless your DM contrives one into the setting. Most people in the world don't have access to magic, and they get by just fine.

Magic is convenient, but a party without magic can still do anything that it needs to do.

 

[tetrasodium]

The length of the recharge is different.

The longer the recharge, the more you want to hold back for the perfect moment, or the big boss fight.

If I play a Paladin every smite used is one I won't have in the final battle where being awesome matters the most. If played as designed, that's less of a concern for the Fighter.

They also balanced some classes around abusing short rests to near save scumming levels of recovery with others getting very little from short rests needing long rests & went one further by making some of those classes have huge niche verlap so the gm is in for a nightmare headache if they start changing the rest structure. All combined it makes for a mess.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

One thing that would really bring casters in line combat wise would be a mechanic that prevents a nova.

The worst part is that the designers were already moving in this direction, and there are mechanics that start to enforce it. That's one of the reasons behind the Concentration limit, and why you can't cast an action spell on the same turn as a bonus action spell.

They just got sloppy at some point. They forgot about other ways to spend spell slots, like reactions, and smites.

 

[Charlaquin]

Depended on when and where you played I guess. I agree that in our later playing of 1e/2e followers tended to fall away as a concept and instead rules were introduced to make PCs harder to kill (1e already has "die at negative hit points', and then 'die at -10' and gives fighters d10 hit dice). However, in the earlier days of D&D and early AD&D we played in a different way. There was an overarching campaign world, with several 100 participants. Various people refereed games. Everyone had various characters, and the PCs were not 'allies', they might band together to adventure, and follow 'rules of order' that forbade backstabbing (sort of). However they were each in charge of henchmen, hirelings, men-at-arms, whatever. If you needed some cash, the cleric loaned it to you, and got paid back! He might even charge for CLW! It was 'troupe play' much like what I gather was the case in Lake Geneva.
Of course there were also other DMs with their own games and different rules/styles of play. Sometimes there was 'cross over' too, but it was frowned on by the powers that be.

Man, that sounds like so much fun to me.

 

[Charlaquin]

AD&D was my first long term D&D the followers were fluff when I played that 9th level plus fighter.

I think your experience was quite common, which is why the game has evolved to be less of a roguelike war game and more of an RPG. The change was a natural response to how people were actually playing the game. My point was, the caster/martial imbalance made sense in the context of the original design intent. It does not make sense in the context of the way D&D is played today.