D&D 5E [Homebrew] Rebalancing class resource recovery around less encounters (+ thread)

[NotAYakk]

There are 13 classes.

Fighter, Rogue, Monk and Barbarian do not have spells (except for subclasses), and Warlock has short-rest spells.

It might be easier to boost those classes instead of reducing spellcasters, or doing a combination.

Make the chart look like:

1
2
21
22
221
222
2221
2222
22221
22222
222221
222221
2222211
2222211
22222111
22222111
222221111
333221111
333222111
333222211

This is about a 1/3 reduction in spells/day prior to level 6 spell slots.

Next, double encounter class resources and make them daily. BM get 6 dice, increasing to 10. Monks get 2 Ki per level.

Third, increase all cantrip damage by 1 die, weapon damage by one set of weapon dice, monk unarmed attack deals 2 monk dice, class features that grant damage dice grants an extra one.

Warlocks use this progression:

1
2
2
2
2
3
3
3
3
4
4
4
4
5
5
5
5
6
6
6

as daily spell slots.

That leaves rogues. You could try giving them +1d6 sneak attack per level.

 

[tetrasodium]

There are 13 classes.

Fighter, Rogue, Monk and Barbarian do not have spells (except for subclasses), and Warlock has short-rest spells.

It might be easier to boost those classes instead of reducing spellcasters, or doing a combination.

Make the chart look like:

1
2
21
22
221
222
2221
2222
22221
22222
222221
222221
2222211
2222211
22222111
22222111
222221111
333221111
333222111
333222211

This is about a 1/3 reduction in spells/day prior to level 6 spell slots.

Next, double encounter class resources and make them daily. BM get 6 dice, increasing to 10. Monks get 2 Ki per level.

Third, increase all cantrip damage by 1 die, weapon damage by one set of weapon dice, monk unarmed attack deals 2 monk dice, class features that grant damage dice grants an extra one.

Warlocks use this progression:

1
2
2
2
2
3
3
3
3
4
4
4
4
5
5
5
5
6
6
6

as daily spell slots.

That leaves rogues. You could try giving them +1d6 sneak attack per level.

The power of long rest vrs short rest classes are all over the map though & that's a big source of difficulty in attempting to accomplish the OP's goal... but I think that would do the opposite and push even more rests & possibly break quite a few classes.

 

[Blue]

A few avenues to explore, unconnected and without order...

- Long rest only refreshes 1/2 HD. Other things could only refresh to half. This is more a nerf on LR classes than a boost to SR classes.

- Some features could require spending HD to refresh.

- Double (or triple) SR resources and adjust the difficulty of encounters. In my experience, this works ok until lvl 7th or 8th. Not so much after unless the game truly becomes epic.

- Instill a few "when you roll initiative and don't have X, gain Y uses of..."

- Without going full scale gritty realism, make LR a bit longer or less readily available.

- Attach a cost for refreshing LR resources. Call it donation, food, material component, "backtrack expenditures in last town".

I like all of these ideas, and would gladly homebrew them. But trying to keep from having to rebalance test everything and get too out of sync with published stuff. So I'd like to try this particular experiment without working in a different resource model (HD for feature recovery) at this time.

 

[Blue]

I think I would allow hit dice to be spent whenever, as long as you are not currently in combat, to eliminate the annoying "should we take a short rest now" question, and assign short rest resources a hit die cost to recharge during the day (not instead of using them for healing, but in addition). This makes the distribution of those resources throughout the day more flexible, while capping how often you can recover them during the day in a way that doesn't require the DM to prevent rest-spamming.

I had to reread that and ruminate, but the idea of using HD spend IN ADDITION to control resource recovery has some interesting points. I did just say to @Laurefindel I didn't want a new resource recovery mechanic for this, and while those reasons still hodl true I may own an apology as I explore it.

So, that means that HD will be spent if either or both of the conditions are met: damage to be healed, resources to be recovered. And it can do both at the same time.

There's a built in pacing mechanism there. And with the addition to spend HD without a short rest (Rally as an action when you want? Go 4e and have healing also allow HD spend?) you it could bring in interesting Nova options. "I can spend this HD now even though I'm not hurt to refresh my X, which would be really useful".

It opens up really interesting long term attrition with only getting back half HD on a long rest.

Okay, no, I'm going to stay on target with this. But that's worth a separate post and one I would gladly contribute to.

 

[Blue]

There are 13 classes.

Fighter, Rogue, Monk and Barbarian do not have spells (except for subclasses), and Warlock has short-rest spells.

It might be easier to boost those classes instead of reducing spellcasters, or doing a combination.

Spells are only part of it. For example, Barbarian rages are huge. If you have 3 rages and there are 8 encounters, you are not raging for FIVE of them. If there are only 3 encounters, you are raging for ALL of them.

And a lot of those classes have other resource usage. Action Surge per short rest, etc.

You need to look at what are the meaningful features with recovery models. Barbarians are almost as # of encounter dependant as casters. Fighter's with Indominable not as much - it's per long rest but it's not a defining characteristic that changes how they play.

 

[Shiroiken]

There's really only two ways to do it: nerf LR classes or boost SR classes. A balance could be found between the two, but that's really what needs to be done.

Boosting SR classes could be as simple as reducing the short rest time from 1 hour to 5 minutes. If the concern over spending HD is an issue (and I don't think it would be), you can simply state that SR ability recovery occurs 5 minutes after use rather than after a SR. This would give the Fighter, Monk, and Warlock the ability to nova as much as LR classes do.

Nerfing LR classes are mainly going to be based around spell slots, as the only LR class that doesn't use them is the Barbarian (barbarian can be balanced by simply reducing the number of rages recovered on a LR by 1). Reducing the slots would be one method, but makes it difficult to balance so that there's no "dead levels" for any of the classes. Another option would be to reduce the amount of slots recovered by half (rounded down), but the tricky part with that is the levels that have only 1 slot. I would recommend allowing them to be recovered by forgoing lower level slots that total the empty slot (e.g. a 7th level caster could give up a 1st level and 3rd level slot they'd recover to regain their 4th level slot). Since only 1st level slots will ever recover more than 1 slot, this is a significant cost for those higher level spells.

The hardest one to balance in this way is the Rogue. It is neither a SR or LR class, with pretty much no abilities to recover. My suggestion would be to add to their primary combat ability: sneak attack. I'd give them a pool of d6s based on level, where they can spend to add 1 (or more based on level) to any sneak attack they make. This pool would refresh on a SR, putting them into that category. The specifics of this would require quite a bit of playtesting to balance correctly.

 

[Charlaquin]

Well, since your goal is to go from 6-8 down to 3-4, you basically just need to cut player resources in half, yeah?

 

[NotAYakk]

True. At 8 encounters each rage us 1/8. So remap rages/LR to rounds of rage*2/LR mayhap.

Rogue, make it 1d8 sneak attack damage, and at give them uncanny riposte (uncanny dodge, plus they can attack back if the source creature is in range). That'll keep then scaling in T2/3. Maybe at 11 let them trigger their riposte when an ally is hit.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[DND_Reborn]

I find that 6-8 encounters per long rest with 2 short rests does a good job of balancing long rest resource primary, short rest resource primary and at-will primary classes against each other during Tiers 2 & 3. I also find that it does not match my DMing style. I've flirted with different length for rests such as the DMG variant, but that has consequences in terms of long duration spells that I think may bring trouble of a different type.

So I'd like to hash out general guidelines for how to change the classes in order to reduce the average adventuring day to 3-4 (2-3?) encounters, with some days with fewer and some days with more as usual. Guideline is I'd rather work out some general or widely applicable rules (like a new spell slot progression) than delve into each class. That said, pointing out that some classes will need some exceptions (like perhaps # of barbarian rages) isn't bad, but I don't want to get caught up in a large back-and-forth discussion on a single feature.

Can you elaborate on how it does not match your DMing style? I think maybe having a better understanding would help me if trying to help you.

We play with a long rest (i.e. sleep) whenever the "real life" of the story allows it. Sometimes that means maybe just a single encounter between long rests, and other times it might be a dozen or more. Short rests come in between, again, whenever the "real life" of the story allows one. I would say, except for infiltration or dungeon crawl-style adventures, our adventuring day probably is 2-4 encounters between long rests on average already.

I am certainly not trying to naysay your goal, but it seems like a lot of work for something and I am not certain what benefit you are hoping to achieve...

Going to your post/point about Barbarian rages. Sure, if you have 3 rages and end up with only three encounters, maybe you raged in all of them... but maybe you didn't, because you don't know those encounters are all that will be coming before you get in a long rest. Sure, as the day wanes on an you think a long rest is likely (you are approaching a town, etc.), and you have rages left it becomes sort of a "use it or lose it" thing, but even then when you get to the town--you just never know what is going to happen. Suddenly, you used up your last rage, and find out no long rest is coming because you have stuff to do now!

If your DMing style is a "hey, every four encounters you will get a long rest" then I guess I can see where you might be coming from, but that style is so different from any I've ever played with or experienced, personally I would find it too mundane.

If I am way off-base, please let me know.